Advertisement

Tech sector leads selloff, Amazon launches home robot, Ford doubles down on EV

Yahoo Finance’s Jared Blikre reports on the day's trending tickers.

Video transcript

- I want to bring in Jared Blikre now with a look at some of our top trending tickers. And it's the techs, it's the mega caps getting killed today, Jared.

JARED BLIKRE: That's right. And a picture is worth a thousand words, so let's go straight to the Wi-Fi interactive, where we see a lot of dark red here. Amazon at the top here, that's down 3%. Facebook off more than 3.5%. So is Alphabet, by the way, having its worst day since February or March of this year. Microsoft down 3%, as well.

I'm glad you brought up the bond market. That's very telling. We have this huge spike up in yields. This is a three-month chart of the five-year. Usually, we talk about the 10. But this has reached multi-year highs. You'd have to go back to 2020, February of that year, very early stage of the pandemic, to see yields this high. And as you noted, Alexis, when we see yields climbing very rapidly, we see the love pulled out of those growth stocks. And so that's the mega caps and it's the tech stocks, especially the software stocks today.

But the mega caps are attracting a lot of attention, so let's go through some of the charts. I have a three-month chart of Google, Alphabet here. And this blue line is a 50-day moving average. And you can see it slicing pretty firmly below it after having respected it only-- I believe that was last week. So an important technical development there.

Here is Facebook. It broke below its 50-day last week or the week before. We can see it extending its declines to multi-month lows here. And then Microsoft, there's another stock that has slipped below, gapped below its 50-day moving average. And so the technical setup for a lot of these mega caps, which have fueled the rally and are really necessary to get all the big major indices up to new highs, just not participating today.

And we've seen this throughout the year-- throughout the year at various times. It does happen when we get these big spike up in yields. We get to a certain point in yields, and then we back off. And so I think that's what we're going to see again.

Just speaking about yields now, I did get a-- see a headline that passed just minutes ago, JP Morgan preparing for a possible US default. And we know that deadline's coming up at the end of the month. That's Thursday. And that is partly-- partly due to the-- or that is partly contributing to some of the downward action we're seeing in stocks and also bonds today, which is sending the yields up. So put it all together, very much a risk off day here, Alexis.

- You better believe it. And I getting swept up and all that is Amazon, one of those mega-cap tech stocks, even though they came out with a slew of new products, including a robot and a drone for the home. I didn't know I needed that, but apparently Amazon thinks I do. What can you tell us?

JARED BLIKRE: Jeff Bezos knows best. So does Andy Jassy. Don't question them. Let's take a look at the Wi-Fi interactive. I got some video and some images of these new products, but I'm going to start with the charts.

So first, I'm going to go to a two-year chart. And this really shows the sideways choppy action that we've seen since basically the middle of last year. The stock really hasn't gone anywhere. You can see the 50-day moving average here relatively flat, just not getting off the dime. But we got some products to discuss, so let's take a look at what they are.

First up, we've got a-- what is this, Amazon's Blink unveils a no-frills $50 video doorbell. There is the doorbell. Also, they entered a partnership with Home Depot, I believe, to offer this particular product. Amazon's new Echo Show 15-- that's a 15-inch screen-- is meant to hang on your wall. And here you can see that product. It does play Prime Video and Netflix. It displays calendars. Also comes with a custom-built chip to help with voice translation.

And here's the big one. Amazon Astro is an Alexa robot that roams your home. And I do have a video here. And you can see those Amazon eyes. Well, this isn't the video. Here is the video. This is some of the feature set. Home security, good for monitoring loved ones, offering a kind of mobile version of the in-home Alexa experience. Here's that video I was looking for.

I don't know if this is creepy or if it's cute, but it definitely has those Amazon hallmarks here. And just as it's playing, I'll just say also there's a-- another device here. There's a tie-up. Here's what I want to say, a tie-up with Walt Disney to put Echo devices in the company's theme parks and hotels. So you'd be able to just go into a Disney hotel or on the campus there and say, hey, Disney, and get your Alexa answers that way. Alexis.

- It looks a little bit like Wall-E, like Disney's Wall-E. I don't-- I think it's kind of-- I think it's kind of cute. OK, so talk to me about Ford, because I know it's one of the few stocks actually in the green today. They're throwing a whole bunch of money at their electric vehicle push.

JARED BLIKRE: Yeah, definitely. This is one of the largest pushes that they've had in their 100-- I believe it's a 115-year history. And I just want to pull up a chart. Ford is actually up 1.3% today. So definitely bucking the trend that we've seen in the other markets. You can see still up 63% year-to-date.

And this is pretty important. So they are joining up with South Korea's SK Innovation. They're going to spend $11.4 billion developing three battery factories and an assembly plant for their electric F-series pickup truck. That's going to be in Tennessee. Those plants are going to be in Tennessee and Kentucky.

I do have some analyst commentary here. Let me just pull up a longer-term chart. Wells Fargo is saying that the battery announcement is not surprising, as it supports the targets from Ford's Capital Markets Day. And here's a quote, "the announcement is another sign that Ford plans to emerge as a leader in battery electric vehicle technology." That's from Wells Fargo. Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas is saying it seems Ford CEO Jim Farley is moving with aggression and urgency to make up for lost time on the industrialization of EV mass production, saying this level of battery capacity is sufficient to supply well over 1 million battery EV units to Ford globally.

And I'll just add, it's very important for a lot of these car manufacturers to control their own destiny with respect to these batteries. We saw that with the recall of the Chevy Volt. That was out of Chevy's control. They had contracted with a third-party provider. So this is a very big push here. And I should say everybody should stick around because we've got Brian Sozzi coming in to talk about his interview earlier with Ford CEO Jim Farley.

- Yeah, you bet. Glad you mentioned it. That's going to be coming up a little later on in the hour. Thanks so much, Jared Blikre. We're going to talk to you later about what's happening in the oil market.