Financial Sector Trails S&P 500 16% Year To Date

Hickey and Walters (Bespoke) submit: As of Tuesday's close, the financial sector was underperfoming the S&P 500 by over 1,600 basis points year to date (-6.6% vs +9.6%). Since 1990, there have only been five other years where the financial sector was underperforming the market at this point in the year, and of those years 1990 is the only year where the spread between the two even approached today's spread (-11.0% vs 0.7%).

Looking back at performance of various sectors in 1990 shows that the underperformance between financials and the market continued. From July 24th, 1990 through the end of the year, the financial sector fell by another 15%, while the S&P 500 declined by 7.2%.

Below we provide a price chart of the sector since the start of the year. As shown, the sector closed below its March lows Tuesday.

click to enlarge