By Carlos Pallordet

Feb 17 - (The Insurer) - The North American insurance composite compiled by investment banks Stonybrook Capital and Weild & Co edged up 0.2% in the week to Friday, lagging behind major Wall Street benchmarks which rebounded from a two-week decline.

The S&P 500 rose 1.5% in the week to Friday while the Dow Jones industrial average gained 0.5%.

Meanwhile, the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 increased by 2.9%, accumulating a 5.3% gain for the year-to-date.

Stonybrook-Weild highlighted that investors had responded well despite news of inflation ticking up in the week. The consumer price index for January posted a 0.5% increase, the largest increase since July 2023.

The investment banks also noted executive orders signed on Monday by President Trump's which increased tariffs on aluminium imports from 10% to 25% while maintaining the 25% tariff on steel imports. All prior country-specific exemptions and quotas were revoked, meaning countries and regions like Canada, Mexico, and the European Union will be subject to the full 25% tariffs from March 12.

“The combination of Federal spending cuts and tariffs geared towards mitigating supply chain risks (steel and aluminum) and mitigating trade deficits (China and Mexico) may be getting a tentative warm reception from the markets,” Stonybrook-Weild said. “Time will tell.”

Meanwhile, in the North American insurance composite, decliners led advancers by 65 to 44, with half of the twelve industry groups ending the week in negative territory.

Reinsurers were the worst performing group, with a fall of 2.5%, followed by standard commercial insurers, with a decline of 1.6%.

Among the former, Reinsurance Group of America saw the largest loss, with a fall of 4.1%, compounding a loss of 8.5% in the previous week.

RenaissanceRe declined 3.6%, retreating from a 3% gain in the previous week, while Everest Group shed 1.6%.

Among standard commercial insurers, shares in Selective declined 3.6% while those in Travelers fell 2.8%.

Meanwhile, The Hartford saw its share price reduce by 1.4%.

United Fire Group was the only riser in the cohort, with its shares surging by 6.1%.

At the other end of the spectrum, the group of personal lines insurers had the best performance within the composite.

Insurtech Root saw the largest increase, with shares surging by 15.5% in the week.

Mercury General also recovered significantly following the California wildfires-triggered selloff of the previous weeks, rising by 9.7% in the week to Friday.

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles-based company revealed that its gross loss from the events could be as high as $2 billion, but estimated a net loss of between $155 million and $325 million.

Porch Group was also among the most significant risers in the group, with shares increasing by 8.8%.

Progressive, the largest company in the cohort by market capitalisation, rose by 3.4%.

Meanwhile, the group of brokers saw shares hold steady on average in the week after being among the highest risers in the previous week.

Marsh McLennan topped the gains, with shares adding 0.6 percent.

In contrast, WTW lost 1.7% in the week, adding to losses of 1.1% in the previous week.

The Stonybrook-Weild North American Insurance composite is up 3.9% on a year-to-date basis.

In this article, we have included a selection of industry comp tables published in full by Stonybrook and Weild & Co in their weekly update.