Alibaba's giant IPO could stir up excitement in tech Friday, as traders also deal with options expirations and potential volatility around the Scottish independence vote.
In Scotland, voters have chosen to remain part of the United Kingdom in a vote that has been touted as a cliff hanger, results on early Friday showed. The sterling soared against the dollar as polls were being counted, rising as high as $1.6525.
Alibaba priced late Thursday at $68 per share, valuing the company at $167.62 billion and making it the biggest IPO of all time. The China e-commerce giant was expected to do well when it opens for trading Friday.
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"A successfully run deal of this size typically has a halo effect for the market, and the reverse is true. The same could be said of Facebook. When that cratered, the rest of the market went down," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities.
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But some investors may be reluctant to jump in on day one. "I think just a lot of people are going to be staring at it. It's just a relative hesitation to be diving in on day one, just given what Facebook did," said Dave Lutz, JonesTrading. "We heard 50 percent of the book went to the top 10 institutions. A lot of people didn't get paper out there."
He added there should be strong Asian retail demand.
Stocks rallied to new highs Thursday, as traders sorted through what a more hawkish Fed means for the markets. Bond yields moved higher but stocks gained as traders also viewed the Fed as committed to holding rates lower for longer.
"New highs for the S&P and Dow creates its own buzz, coming at the end of the week," Hogan said. The quadruple expiration of futures and options could cause some volatility. "It's hard to know how that lines up because I think you had a lot of people who unwound positions after the Fed. If you were leaning against a hawkish statement and negative reaction, you had to unwind that and that's part of what's driving today's market."
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While stocks raced to new highs, analysts were assessing the impact of the Fed's forecast for higher-than-expected rates on stocks.
"We said this (Alibaba) IPO could be one of the sign posts that technology stocks may be getting ready to take a breather," said Julian Emanuel, equity and derivatives strategist at UBS. "The market's mind is coming around to higher interest rates are going to happen. Higher interest rates impact higher multiple stocks disproportionately."
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Emanuel said momentum names could be vulnerable to a pull back, as well as some tech.
But he also sees some parts of the market worth hiding in, including financials, big-box stores and automobiles. All three have big U.S. customer bases and financials benefit from rising rates.
The S&P financial sector was Thursday's best performer, up more than 1 percent.
The was up 9 points Thursday at 2,011 and the Dow was up 109 points at 17,265.
—By CNBC's Patti Domm