By Carlos Pallordet

March 25 - (The Insurer) - The North American insurance composite, compiled by investment banks Stonybrook Capital and Weild & Co, saw advancers lead decliners by 62 to 46, although most P&C insurers fell in the week to Friday.

The S&P 500 rose 0.5% week on week, while the Nasdaq 100 added 0.3%. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased 1.2%.

However, all Wall Street benchmarks remained in negative territory for the year to date.

The small cap Russell 2000 index was up 0.6% last week and accumulated a fall of 7.8% since the start of the year.

Stonybrook-Weild noted the Federal Reserve had left interest rates unchanged at its monetary policy on Wednesday, with committee members indicating they still expected 50 basis points of cuts in 2025.

This was unchanged from their guidance in December, allowing longer-term interest rates to ease off in response, the report said.

“However, officials increased their expectations for 2025 inflation while lowering their expectations for GDP growth,” the investment banks highlighted.

“While tariffs raise Federal revenue and encourage domestic production and employment, they are also inflationary. Chair Powell said that their base case for the impact of tariffs is that they will be ‘transitory’ while other commentators are concerned that potential further tariff rises cause businesses to freeze planning,” they said.

The banks also highlighted that the U.S. Census Bureau’s retail sales growth reading of 0.2% in February, released on Monday, was well below consensus estimates of 0.7%. Meanwhile, gold, which is traditionally viewed as a safe haven during times of geopolitical and economic uncertainty, reached an all-time high of $3,057 per ounce on Thursday.

In the North American insurance composite, six out of the 12 industry groups advanced in the week. The index is up 8.5% on a year-to-date basis, in contrast with all major Wall Street benchmarks, which remain in the red.

Life, annuity and accident insurers was the best performing group, rising 2.6% in the week.

This was followed by global P&C insurers, which saw their shares increase 1.0% on average. The rise in the latter was driven mostly by the performance of Berkshire Hathaway, with shares climbing 1.4% week on week.

In contrast, shares in AIG flatlined while Chubb lost 0.9%.

At the other end of the spectrum, micro cap insurers and personal lines insurers were the worst performing groups in the composite, falling 4.6% and 2.8%, respectively.

Progressive, the largest company in the latter group by market capitalization, fell 3.8%, reversing gains of 3.4% in the previous week.

Allstate was down 0.5% while Kemper shed 3.3%.

Kingstone Companies saw the largest fall in the group, dropping 7.6% in the week.

Coastal insurers were also among the fallers of the week, with shares in the group down 1.7% on average.

All four constituents in the cohort ended in negative territory.

American Coastal topped the losses with a 2.9% fall, followed by Universal Insurance and HCI Group, which were down 1.8% and 1.5%, respectively.

Meanwhile, the group of reinsurers was down 0.7% for the week.

Conduit Holdings was the most significant faller, with shares dropping 8.9% in the week to Friday.

This added to losses of 1.8% in the previous week.

Leader Everest Group lost 1.7% while RenaissanceRe was down 1.4%.

In contrast, shares in SiriusPoint continued to recover, with gains of 6.8% in the week to Friday and 3.3% in the previous week.

In this article, we have included a selection of industry comp tables published in full by Stonybrook and Weild & Co in their weekly update.