Stocks rally despite jobless claims topping 33 million in 7 weeks

Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre breaks down the latest market action.

Video Transcript

- Welcome back to Yahoo Finance. You know, we saw in the last week another 3 plus million Americans filing for unemployment benefits, and yet these markets seem to know something we don't. Jared Blikre is here to help explain why the markets are trending higher, and the NASDAQ crossing a milestone today.

JARED BLIKRE: Yes, it is. We'll take a look at that in just a second. Dow is up nearly 400 points, and here is the NASDAQ, up 1.5%, slightly underperforming the Dow and S&P 500. But let's check-- take a look at our year-to-date charts for the NASDAQ, and pull this up. Here we go, up 21 basis points on the year. So we have finally cleared some resistance here. We're making new highs for the week. And that's actually new highs for the last couple of months for the NASDAQ.

Looking at the S&P 500, we were able to break slightly above the range that we had in place over the last few days. This is considered an area that shorts need to defend. So if it breaks, especially on a closing basis, could very well end up at the 3,000 level in the S&P 500. And that's an area where a lot of traders are eyeing because we've got the 200-day moving average, you've got the big round number. And let's switch over to the Russell, because that is up 1.7%, as well. But you can see it's been underperforming as of late.

Now, chip stocks are doing very well. They have actually been-- they're still down 6% year-to-date, but they have been outperforming over the last few sessions. And we're also watching the VIX. Now, the VIX coming down to that $30 support level that we've been watching. And if it breaks below, we'll probably see a nice pop in equities again for the S&P 500 to get back to that 3,000 level. And if it gets a little bit above there, probably have even more short covering and see higher prices. Here is the 10-year T-note yield. We got a big pop yesterday after it was disclosed by the Treasury that they're going to be issuing $96 billion in coupons next week alone. That is a record. But it is down five basis points today, kind of coming back towards that 6.0% level.

And also, let's take a look at some of the Dow stocks that are outperforming today. We've got Microsoft up 75 basis points, Apple up 1%. And Visa, that is up 3%. And let's take a year-to-date look at Visa. Some of the payment processors have been doing well. Not American Express, but it is almost to the breakeven point. Square just reported its earnings after the bell yesterday. And in fact, let's take a look at some of these earnings, earnings heat map that we have here, if I can get that up. Here we go. PayPal up 13%. We had T-Mobile up 7%. Square, you can see that's up 12%, up 22% year-to-date. And guess what, guys? We also have the US dollar in rally mode, too.

- Now, you've mentioned the US dollar being in rally mode. I guess the rest of the world is still kind of panicked about where we're headed.

JARED BLIKRE: Yeah. And if-- this is our world heat map, or world map for currencies. Anything green means that the dollar is up. And you can see it's up just slightly here, the DXY index. But I want to get to some of the individual names here because the emerging markets are having a lot of trouble here. And we can start with the Turkish lira. If we pull this up, it is down. That means the US dollar is sinking, and it's advancing a little bit. But let's take a look at this chart here, and on a year-to-date basis, you can see that it has just sunk. So US dollar is up 20% versus the lira, but that is a record high. That is causing a lot of consternation for traders over there.

And then we also have the British-- excuse me, not the British, the Brazilian real. That's also at an all-time high. That's the US dollar has strengthened 44% versus the real. That means that anything that you went to Brazil, you'll pretty much get for 50% off, Adam.