Stocks trade higher at the open, banking fears begin to ease

Yahoo Finance Live’s Brad Smith breaks down how stocks are trading following the opening bell on Thursday.

Video transcript

BRAD SMITH: Yeah, setting the mood with some candlesticks for these past four days there. You're seeing it up by about 2% for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Out of the gate higher by about half a percent this morning, though.

The NASDAQ Composite, the aforementioned NASDAQ 100 bull-market territory and run there that we've seen and the NASDAQ Composite holistically, you're seeing that up over the past four days by about 1 and 1/2%. Just about 7/10 of a percent is what that-- well, 7/10 of a percent in terms of a move higher this morning is what we're seeing.

And the S&P 500, that up 6/10 of a percent this morning. Past four days up by a little more than 2%.

Let's take a look at the sector activity out of the gate this morning. And I'm just going to toggle back on over to that screen here so we can take a look at the 11 S&P 500 sectors. Technology-- and this is year to date, but if we put this on intraday, you're going to see XLRE actually leading the pack as all of the major averages are-- all of the major averages and their sectors as well for the S&P 500 are in positive territory.

Real estate leading the charts. That's up 1.3%. And then additionally you've got a sea of green there on the rest of the sectors. Looks like XLB as well, materials, doing well this morning. That's up by about 1%. And technology and consumer discretionary a little bit of a flip-flop there on a percentage basis, but both of them in the green by about 8/10 of a percent right now.

Let's also just take a quick look at the NASDAQ 100. Tech-heavy average, and a lot of focus on tech and for good reason because, of course, the year-to-date activity that you've seen within tech, especially for those mega-cap tech stocks, large bounce back there, especially in names like Nvidia. You're seeing Tesla and Meta even up. Meta's up by about 70% this year.

Intraday, you're seeing some slight declines here in Meta platforms. It's down by about 3/10 of a percent. Nvidia, though, you've got some good chip news more broadly in that industry that has come out. So Nvidia perhaps one of the beneficiaries on that news from Intel.

And then additionally we're tracking Tesla and Amazon. They've got gains of a little more than 1.3% right now. Microsoft, hey, that's up by about 1.4%-- 1.3% right now for the Washington-based company.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, and as we can see because this is a market-cap-weighted heatmap that we have here, Apple and Microsoft remain just absolutely dominant in terms of their weighting in the NASDAQ 100. And as Jared pointed out earlier, it's really the mega caps that are responsible for the outperformance of the NASDAQ 100 versus the composite this year. It's just been amazing the growth that they have had as others have fallen back the year to date. Ooh.