Stocks open lower as COVID-19 protests in China weigh on markets

Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre breaks down moves in the stock market, U.S. dollar, and crude oil on Monday.

Video transcript

JULIE HYMAN: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. Let's take a look at markets, which are down a little bit in the red, not too steeply, though. Let's get to Jared Blikre at the YFi Interactive, standing in front of the map here today, where I'm seeing a lot of red.

JARED BLIKRE: Yes, we're kicking off the week on a red note here. You can see the Dow down about 1/5 a percent, S&P 500 down 44 basis points, NASDAQ down about 30 basis points. But let's take a longer look at the S&P 500. This is the benchmark. This is the kahuna. This is a year-to-date look of the S&P 500's performance. And by the way, the record high for the S&P 500 by way of reminder, that came on the very first trading day of the year. So that is a record high over there. You can see still not even climbing about halfway through that.

Now, right here, not shown is a 200-day moving average. It's also been a sticking point over the last few weeks. So I'm going to say 4,000, 4,100, kind of a big level that we're going to be watching in here. Now, Tom Lee over at Strat had an interesting forecast of 4,400 to 4,500 for the end of the year. That's a big distance to traverse for this index in a short period of time, but he does note that there are 11 tailwinds which have-- or 11 headwinds of the year, which have really formed into tailwinds. Interesting analysis.

I don't know if the speed of that move is going to point to 4,400, 4,500, but I will say this. If it can break out of this resistance area and the dollar also, at the same time, can break below its 200-day moving average, not shown here-- it would have to go below that-- that is a possibility. Now, if, on the other side-- on the other hand, if the S&P 500 falls from here, if the dollar bounces off that, probably going to be a sideways to down action.

So let's take a look at where we are in terms of sector action for the day. More red than green, although consumer discretionary, those retail stocks, stocks on this Cyber Monday, those are outperforming. That's XLY. They're followed by healthcare, XLB, and staples just barely in the green. To the downside, energy down about 2 and 1/2%.

Let's take a real quick look at crude oil. CL equals F, it's down 2% to the lowest point of the year. Let me show you a one-year chart. So you'd have to go all the way back to, I guess, last December to really get to where the price action here. So below 75, kind of a big move for crude oil, just like I was talking about, the S&P 500 and the dollar at their respective 200-day moving averages.

China stocks, got to talk Pinduoduo for a second, huge blockbuster earnings. Citi note noting that this is a second blockbuster earnings report in a row, basically double the Street's estimates in terms of profit that was up four times over a year ago, and also doubling revenue estimates. So pretty good results for Pinduoduo. Chinese stocks bottomed before just about everything else this year, so maybe a bellwether, maybe just kind of one of those one-offs, guys.