By Carlos Pallordet

June 23 - (The Insurer) - The North American insurance composite compiled by Stonybrook Capital and Weild & Co slid 0.1% last week, in line with broader market indexes, which remained flat despite the conflict between Israel and Iran.

The S&P 500 was down 0.2% while both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 ended the week little changed.

Meanwhile, the small-cap Russell 2000 index was up 0.4% for the week.

Stonybrook-Weild noted that gold prices declined about 2% last week while crude oil increased modestly to $73.84 per barrel.

“Markets were relatively calm in this shortened trading week, considering the number of bombs dropped by Israel on Iran and the number of ballistic missiles, some getting through, that Iran launched into Israel,” the investment banks said.

“The question now is, ‘Will there be regime change in Iran and if so, will it be by Israel, the United States, the Iranian people or some combination of the three?’ The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is 86 years old,” they added.

The investment banks highlighted that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announced no change to interest rates during Wednesday’s Federal Open Market Committee press conference and acknowledged the risks posed by both rising unemployment and inflation. Powell also emphasised that the Fed is closely monitoring the effects of tariffs but current data has yet to reveal significant negative consequences.

“Despite the turmoil in the Middle East and Powell’s dour message, the VIX 'Fear Index' was down just a touch (less than 1%), and the yield curve, credit spreads and exchange rates were little changed,” they concluded.

In the North American insurance composite, advancers led decliners by 58 to 51 with six of the 12 groups advancing in the week.

The two best-performing groups were other brokers and distributors, up 1.2%, and micro cap insurers, up 0.9%.

The two worst-performing groups were coastal insurers, down 2.9%, and insurance service providers, down 2.8%.

Among the former, HCI Group was the biggest faller last week, with a 5.6% decline adding to a loss of 7.5% in the previous week.

Heritage Insurance was down 2.5%, compounding a loss of 8.1% in the previous week.

Meanwhile, Universal Insurance and American Coastal slid 0.2% and 0.4%, respectively.

In contrast, newly listed American Integrity added 1.0% in the week to Friday.

The group of personal lines insurers was also among the weakest performers of the week, with shares down 1.9% on average.

Progressive and Allstate, the two largest companies in the cohort by market capitalisation, fell 2.2% and 1.8%, respectively.

Both had declined more than 4.0% in the previous week.

Root recorded the largest fall in the cohort, losing 5.6% in the week to Friday.

In contrast, insurtech peer Lemonade jumped 9.5%, after adding 1.5% in the previous week.

The group of reinsurers eked out a gain of 0.1% on average.

Leader Everest Group rose 0.8%, while Conduit Holdings added 0.9%.

RenaissanceRe remained almost unchanged while Reinsurance Group of America shed 0.6%.

The cohort of global brokers also closed the week in positive territory, adding 0.3% on average.

Only Marsh McLennan lost ground last week, with its shares dropping 0.5%.

In contrast, Arthur J Gallagher added 1.1% following a loss of 3.7% in the previous week.

Aon and WTW eked out gains of 0.5% and 0.9%, respectively, after losing 4.9% and 4.2% in the previous week.

The Stonybrook-Weild North American Insurance composite is up 5.5% 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.