Industry Performance in the U.S. Investable Market

Using the same universe for the U.S. investable market (excluding stocks that did not trade between 12/31/07 and 4/22/08) as the following study, we break down performance by industry below. The figures as shown are sorted with the largest group at the top. Oil & Gas, having a market capitalization of $1.6 trillion and consisting of 184 stocks, has been one of the best performing groups this year, with the average member up 9.49%. The stocks doing best on average are the 8 stocks in the Tobacco group, which has a market cap of $87.5 billion (note that only Altria's (MO) market cap of $46.5b was included, Philip Morris International (PM) was excluded from the study).

The worst stocks have been Airlines; those 18 names were down 33% on average, and the average U.S. stock is down 9.9% for the year.

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