By Carlos Pallordet

Feb 24 - (The Insurer) - The North American insurance composite compiled by Stonybrook Capital and Weild & Co moved into negative territory last week but still outperformed all major Wall Street benchmarks, which recorded significant falls.

The S&P 500 declined by 1.7% while the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 lost 2.3%.

Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2.5% in the week to Friday.

“Wall Street ended the week with a thud as fears mounted over the state of the economy,” Stonybrook-Weild said.

“All major stock indices were down sharply with the Russell 2000 small cap index ending the week in negative territory for the year,” the investment banks added.

The Russell 2000 tumbled 3.7% in the week, accumulating a 1.6% fall in the year-to-date.

“Consumer sentiment soured as the one-two punch of fear of tariff-driven inflation and slowing growth may be painting a new reality. The University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index fell to 64.7 in February 2025, down from 71.7 in January,” Stonybrook-Weild highlighted.

The investment banking firms also noted that speculation is growing in the bond market that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates by the end of the year, as evidenced by futures markets and the recent decline in interest rates across various durations and credit qualities to near year-to-date lows.

In the North American insurance composite, advancers trailed decliners by 28 to 82, with only five of the 12 industry groups advancing in the week.

The two worst-performing groups were life, annuity and accident insurers and coastal insurers, both down 2.7%.

Heritage Insurance experienced the most significant decline among the latter group, with its shares dropping by 12.5% over the week, returning to the same level as at the beginning of February.

Meanwhile, shares in Universal Insurance and HCI Group declined by 4.1% and 1.0%, respectively.

In contrast, American Coastal, the fourth constituent in the cohort, ended in positive territory with a rise of 1.3%.

The group of specialty commercial insurers was also among the worst performers, with a fall of 1.9%.

Trupanion recorded the biggest drop in the cohort with its share falling by 33.6%.

Meanwhile, Fidelis Insurance Holdings lost 10.4% in the week.

Intact Financial and Arch Capital, the two largest companies in the cohort by market capitalisation, declined 4.0% and 0.1%, respectively.

The group of reinsurers ended the week down 1.8% on average.

Conduit Holdings suffered the biggest loss in the cohort, with its shares dropping 11.8%, while Reinsurance Group of America lost 5.2%.

In contrast, Everest Group, the largest company in the cohort by market capitalisation, eked out a gain of 1.3% in the week.

The Stonybrook-Weild North American Insurance composite is up 3.6% 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.