By Carlos Pallordet

June 16 - (The Insurer) - Ten of the 12 industry groups in the North American insurance composite compiled by Stonybrook Capital and Weild & Co declined last week after markets reacted negatively to hostilities between Israel and Iran.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the week 1.3% lower while the S&P 500 fell 0.4%.

Meanwhile, the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 was down 0.6%.

The small-cap Russell 2000 index dropped 1.5% in the week and is now down 5.8% for the year to date.

“A positive week turned down sharply when Friday opened with news of Israel’s widespread attack on Iran’s military leadership and nuclear program,” Stonybrook-Weild said.

“Equities and bond prices fell swiftly, with the Dow off 600 points in the first half hour. It lost a further 150 points in the afternoon on news of Iran’s retaliatory drone attack. Oil prices rose on fear of Iranian export disruptions,” they explained.

The May jobs report, released last Wednesday, showed the U.S. economy added 139,000 new jobs over the month compared to 186,000 in the prior-year period, with the labour force participation rate also declining. The banks suggested this gave the Federal Reserve room to lower rates later in the year.

However, they also noted that Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, had warned that U.S. economic conditions could worsen, with employment likely to decline somewhat and inflation expected to rise. Dimon also said he expected the effects of tariffs and the waning impact of pandemic-era stimulus to become more apparent in the coming months.

In the North American insurance composite, advancers trailed decliners by 23 to 85.

The two best-performing groups were title insurers, up 2.0%, and micro-cap insurers, up 1.4%.

Coastal insurers were the worst performers, losing 6.2% on average last week.

Heritage experienced the largest fall in the cohort, down 8.1%. HCI Group dropped 7.5% while American Coastal was down 4.5%.

The group of personal lines insurers ended the week 4.0% lower.

Leaders Progressive and Allstate fell 4.1% and 4.4%, respectively.

Insurtechs Lemonade and Hippo were the only members of the cohort to end the week in positive territory, adding 1.5% and 1.9%, respectively.

The group of reinsurers ended the week down 2.5%.

Reinsurance Group of America experienced the largest loss, with a fall of 4.4%.

Everest Group, the largest company in the cohort by market capitalisation, declined 3.3%.

RenaissanceRe and Conduit Holdings fell 1.0% and 1.8%, respectively.

Meanwhile, the group of global brokers shed 4.7% last week.

Leader Marsh McLennan ended the week 5.5% lower, followed by Aon with a loss of 4.9%.

Meanwhile WTW and Arthur J Gallagher traded down 4.3% and 3.7%, respectively.

The Stonybrook-Weild North American Insurance composite is up 5.7% 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.