Oil futures see a big drop this week

Yahoo Finance's Julie Hyman looks at how stocks are performing in early trading on Wednesday.

Video transcript

JULIE HYMAN: In the meantime, we've got to check on what's happening in the oil market right now. We are seeing a pretty steep drop in oil futures on an intraday basis, down by 4% right now. And really, we have been seeing this slump as of late, really over the past couple of days is when it's been most acute. Down 4% over that period of time, as it looks like investors are looking to maybe seeing some more slowing economic growth.

And so that's also feeding through into what we're seeing in stock action among the energy sector. You can see XLE, the energy ETF, the worst-performing of the industry groups in the S&P 500 today. Being dragged down by those oil prices.

And if you look more specifically at what we're seeing here, the heat map of energy is looking pretty bleak here today. ExxonMobil down 1.4%. Chevron down 1 and 1/3%. Conoco down 2%. Shell down 1%.

So we are seeing this selloff really accelerate and many of these oil names, along with those oil prices. We're gonna keep on watching this theme. Brad, the irony, of course, is we've still had quite a number of investors this year tell us that they still like many of the energy stocks.

BRAD SMITH: Yeah, and of course, the space had a ton of energy, if you will, over the course of 2022 with people like the Omaha-- the Oracle of Omaha, who we will hear from this weekend, as well.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, I see OXY on here.

BRAD SMITH: Really giving a lot of fervor to the space. Yeah. Let's see if we have OXY.

JULIE HYMAN: Oh.

BRAD SMITH: It's down 9/10 of a percent-- right there in the middle-- on the day.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah.

BRAD SMITH: But we'll continue to watch that.