View from the Observation Deck

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. The S&P 500 Index was comprised of 11 sectors and 127 subsectors on 3/28/25, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. The 15 top-performing subsectors in the chart posted total returns ranging from 30.48% (Gold) to 15.62% (Insurance Brokers). Click here to view our last post on this topic.

• As indicated in the chart above, the Communication Services and Financials sectors were tied for most top-performing subsectors (3) on a year-to-date (YTD) basis. Semiconductors, which are part of the S&P 500 Information Technology Index, are notably absent from today’s chart. Semiconductors were among the top-performing subsectors in each of our last seven posts on this topic (dating back to 3/21/2023).
  
  
• With respect to the 11 major sectors that comprise the S&P 500 Index, Energy posted the highest total return for the period captured in the chart, increasing by 10.21%. The second and third-best performers were Health Care and Consumer Staples, with total returns of 6.54% and 5.23%, respectively. The S&P 500 Index posted a total return of -4.28% over the period.
  
  
• As of 3/28/25, the most heavily weighted sector in the S&P 500 Index was Information Technology at 29.78%, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. For comparison, Financials and Health Care were the next-largest sectors with weightings of 14.58% and 11.14%, respectively.
  
  
• Using 2025 consensus earnings estimates, the Information Technology and Energy sectors had the highest and lowest price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios at 31.14 and 15.98, respectively, as of 3/31/25 (excluding Real Estate). For comparison, the S&P 500 Index had a P/E ratio of 22.64 as of the same date.

Takeaway: With a total return of 10.21%, the S&P 500 Energy Index is the top-performing S&P 500 Index sector YTD. Despite this feat, not a single Energy subsector made its way into today’s chart, suggesting the sector’s gains have been well-distributed across its five subsectors. We wrote about energy in a post on 3/20 (click here), suggesting that burgeoning demand for natural gas and U.S. crude oil were unlikely to weaken in the near-term. The Gold subsector sits at the top of today’s chart, propelled upward by record highs in the price of its underlying metal. The price of one troy ounce of gold stood at a record $3,123.57 on 3/31/25. As we see it, persistently high inflation and a worsening U.S. economic outlook may explain gold’s 19.02% price increase YTD. The Information Technology Index is notably absent from today’s chart, marking the first time the sector has been missing from this post in over two years.

This chart is for illustrative purposes only and not indicative of any actual investment. The illustration excludes the effects of taxes and brokerage commissions and other expenses incurred when investing. Investors cannot invest directly in an index. The S&P 500 Index is an unmanaged index of 500 companies used to measure large-cap U.S. stock market performance, while the S&P sector and subsector indices are capitalization-weighted and comprised of S&P 500 constituents representing a specific sector or industry.

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