Oil had a rough finish to the week losing 2.9% today which left the markets mostly mixed and choppy. The Nasdaq 100 was able to finish positive by 18 points (0.38%) but the S&P 500 and Dow 30 finished in the red with -0.15 point (-0.01%) and 33 point (-0.21%) declines respectively.Yahoo (YHOO  ) shares popped 2.11% today and grabbed the medias attention after the company announced that it has formed a special committee to explore strategic alternatives. These "alternatives" will also include talks about their position in Alibaba (BABA  ) and how to proceed. This news was also seen as positive for Alibaba as it gained 1.14%.

Applied Materials (AMAT  ) enjoyed a nice 7.05% gain today as the company released better than expected fourth-quarter earnings, and gave an upbeat profit outlook for its current quarter. The company reported earnings per share of $0.29 on $2.37 billion in revenue. Today's pop puts AMAT in the green for the year.

Nordstrom (JWN  ) took a 6.71% hit today after giving a disappointing forecast for the first half of the new fiscal year and missing Wall Street estimates for the fourth quarter. The upscale department store also warned that it expects profit per share to drop 30%. This held back the retail sector today as evidenced by popular Retail ETF (XRT  ) which lost 0.77%.

Lastly, Apple (AAPL  ) was back in the news today as the U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion which would force Apple to unlock the iPhone that belonged to the San Bernardino terrorists. The stock was largely unaffected by this news as it was only down 0.23%.