Today's blog post is for those investors who want to drill down below the sector level to see what is performing well in the stock market.

We chose 12/14/20 as our start date because we wanted to show how the S&P 500 Index has performed since Joe Biden was elected president. While the election took place on 11/3/20, the Electoral College's vote on 12/14/20 made it official. 

The S&P 500 Index is currently comprised of 11 sectors and 124 subsectors, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.

As indicated in the chart above, Industrials and Financials both had three subsectors on the list. Surprisingly, not a single subsector from Information Technology cracked the top 15.   

As of 7/14/21, the most heavily weighted sector in the S&P 500 Index was Information Technology at 27.89%, according to Bloomberg. Financials and Industrials came in at 10.96% and 8.40%, respectively. 

The 15 top-performing subsectors in the chart posted total returns ranging from 35.72% (Building Products) to 74.15% (Steel). 

With respect to the 11 sectors, all of them posted positive total returns for the period captured in the chart. 

From 12/14/20-7/13/21, the top-performing S&P 500 sector indices were Energy, Financials and Real Estate, up 37.11%, 32.17% and 30.80%, respectively, on a total return basis, according to Bloomberg. The S&P 500 Index posted a total return of 20.77% for the period. 

There are a growing number of packaged products, such as exchange-traded funds, that feature S&P 500 subsectors.