By Carlos Pallordet

March 10 - (The Insurer) - The North American insurance composite, compiled by Stonybrook Capital and Weild & Co, fell 2.9% in the week to Friday, with all but one of the 12 industry groups in the composite ending in negative territory.

The S&P 500 index closed the week down 3.1%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 lost 3.3%.

The Dow Jones industrials average saw a decline of 2.4%. Meanwhile, the small cap Russell 2000 slumped 4.1%.

“The stock market had its worst weekly drop in months as tariffs and threats of a trade war cast a shadow and a moderately disappointing jobs report,” said Stonybrook-Weild.

The investment banks highlighted that short-term U.S. Treasury rates had declined from 4.35% to 4.31%, “reflecting the potential for a softer economy and a moderately higher likelihood of near-term Fed cuts".

In contrast, the 10-year Treasury rates increased from 4.22% to 4.28%.

“M&A activity is now at its lowest since 2015 (uncertainty never helps) and real estate builders are frozen over the uncertainty of materials pricing,” they noted.

“On Thursday, the Atlanta Fed's ‘GDPNow’ model was revised to forecast a decline of 2.8% in U.S. GDP for Q1 2025. This was a significant downgrade from their recent forecast of a 1.5% decline,” they added.

In the North American insurance composite, decliners led advancer by 85 to 25.

Among the composite groups, personal lines insurers were the only ones to finish in positive territory, posting a 2.5% increase for the week.

Shares of the leading company, Progressive, surged by 3.4%, significantly contributing to the overall rise in the peer group due to its substantial market capitalisation.

Allstate, the second-largest company in the cohort by market capitalisation, eked out a gain of 0.8%.

In contrast, Kemper fell 1.5% while Mercury General and Lemonade shed 0.3% and 0.5%, respectively.

Kingstone Companies saw the largest fall in the group, with shares down 7.1%.

At the other end of the spectrum, global P&C insurers experienced a 3.5% decline, having being the second best performing group in the previous week.

The fall was driven primarily by a 4.1% drop in Berkshire Hathaway’s share price. In the previous week, the company had seen its shares rise by 7.8%.

Meanwhile, AIG, which in the previous week had surged by 8.2%, retreated 1.7%.

Chubb was the only one in the cohort of three companies to finish in positive territory, eking out a gain of 0.4% after rising 6.8% in the previous week.

The group of standard commercial insurers fell 1.5% in the week to Friday, after advancing 6.8% in the previous week.

Cincinnati Financial topped the losses, slumping 5.3%, followed by Old Republic, which was down 3.1%.

Travelers and The Hartford, which had risen by 7.7% and 6.1%, respectively, in the previous week, shed 0.3% and 0.4%.

Among global brokers, which were down 2.1% on average, Arthur J Gallagher experienced the most significant fall, declining 4.1%.

WTW, which had advanced 4.2% in the previous week, fell by 2.6%.

Meanwhile Aon, which had led the gains in the previous week with a 5.0% surge, declined 1.5%.

The two worst performing groups in the composite were micro cap insurers, down 5.5%, and life, annuity and accident insurers, down 5.1%.

The Stonybrook–Weild North American Insurance composite is up 9.3% 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.