MARKETS: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq close lower after late-day selloff — YF Premium is bullish on Alibaba (BABA)

Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre joins Seana Smith to break down the day's price action in stocks as well as a long in Alibaba (BABA), a Yahoo Finance Premium Investment Idea.

Video transcript

SEANA SMITH: Stocks closing the day in the red, but the Dow and the NASDAQ both off just almost a half of a percent. We have Jared Blikre. He was tracking the action for us and joins us now with more. Jared.

JARED BLIKRE: That's right. We had a rally that lasted most of the day, but then in the final hour, mostly in the final 30 minutes, we gave back all of those gains and then some. The news being President Trump signed the executive order on Twitter and with ramifications for Facebook as well but also saying that he's going to have a press conference regarding China tomorrow. That's one of the big two wildcards in the market right now.

So the Dow is down about 150 points. NASDAQ down half a percent. S&P 500 down 2/10 of a percent. Russell 2000 was the big loser, down 2 and 1/2%. Had been the big winner up until now.

And just looking at one of our heat maps here, we can see kind of a mixed picture. Tech was doing mediocre today. It hadn't done well Monday or-- excuse me, Tuesday and Wednesday, but it came back a little bit today. But Microsoft-- some of the software names just down, although you can see it's up about 1/3 of a percent in after hours maybe because of those Salesforce earnings.

Also taking a look at the NASDAQ here, just looking at some of those big-cap names. Most of them finished in the red as well. So we'll have to see what comes of that press conference tomorrow.

But I want to get to our Yahoo Finance Premium call of the day. This is an investment idea brought to you by Argus Research, which you get with your premium subscription. And this is a long call on Alibaba. And Argus Research is saying that Alibaba's mainland Chinese markets appear to be getting back to normal, though normal may not be what it used to be. BABA should be a long-term beneficiary of a digital transformation made necessary by the pandemic.

Appreciation to our 12-month target price of $260 implies a risk-adjusted return that is greater than our forecast for the broad market and thus consistent with our near-term buy rating. But $260 would be somewhere up here. And if you're looking to place a stop to protect yourself, you could put it just below $190. That does give you 200-- that does give you 200-day moving average protection as well.

You can sign up for a free trial for 14 days on our website, yahoofinance.com. And that is our Yahoo Finance Premium investment idea of the day, Seana.