Markets see modest gains, small-cap and energy stocks among biggest leaders

Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre looks at today's outperformers in the stock market.

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JARED BLIKRE: So let's take a look at the YFi interactive. Small caps, interesting, leading the day. We started out in the red for most of the indices, and now we are in the green. Let's check out the S&P 500 as well, which has just reached session highs only minutes ago.

And let's take a longer look at the S&P 500. This is a two-month candlestick chart. What stands out is the incredible sideways action. We have traced out a very narrow range over the last seven days. The more you consolidate, the bigger the breakout. So we'll have to see which way this goes. Incremental evidence favors the bulls, but we've seen this movie before. And the breaks can get hit on this rally pretty quickly.

Nevertheless, we have the VIX at the lowest level in over a month. I'd say that's about six weeks. The VIX of the VIX, that is the third derivative, I think-- that is at the lowest level, I believe, in 52 weeks. And here is the MOVE index-- bond market is showing a little bit less volatility as well. And that is aiding stocks.

Now, as you said, Seana, energy is the biggest outperformer here. That is up 3% followed by industrials, tech, health care. All of those are outperforming today. And I want to show you our Leaders index, because Chinese stocks have been up all day. Even when the market started in the red, a lot of these names were in the green. That's up 3.5%. That's KWEB.

Then we got IBB, that's biotech, Ark Components, software, momentum, cannabis, IPO-- all of those are outperforming today. So a nice mix to see there. Here are those Chinese stocks. We can see Pinduoduo up 9.5%, Alibaba up 4.5%, and Biogen, that's up 10% as well.

Got to take a look at those ARK components. Those have been beaten down, but some of them outperforming today. Shopify, I guess so positive we see it twice there. It's up 4.5%. Twilio also up 4.5%. And we do want to check out the travel sector as well-- kind of a mixed board. But I'll tell you what, United's up 3%, American is up 1.5% and I think people will take that.

We've got to check out crypto because Citadel, in partnership with Virtu, according to CoinDesk, is building out a trading desk for crypto. We'll have to see where that goes. But I'll tell you what-- Bitcoin has been in a holding pattern as well. This is going back one month-- incredible sideways action here, just waiting for the next breakout, guys.