By Carlos Pallordet

April 28 - (The Insurer) - The North American insurance composite compiled by investment banks Stonybrook and Weild & Co rose 0.6% last week, underperforming all major Wall Street benchmarks.

In comparison, the S&P 500 surged 4.6%, the Nasdaq 100 jumped 6.4%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased 2.5% and the small-cap Russell 2000 added 4.1% during the week.

Stonybrook-Weild attributed the broader stock market recovery, particularly among tech stocks, to strong earnings reports from Alphabet and Nvidia, along with “less-bad-than-expected” results from Tesla.

“The markets generally heaved a sigh of relief as the President hinted at several possible bi-lateral trade deals and softening tariffs with China. China in turn considered exemptions for some U.S. goods,” the investment banks explained.

The banks noted the fall in U.S. Treasury yields, with 10-year bonds dropping to 4.29%.

“The combination of recessionary pressures from tariffs, the public pressures put on Fed Chair Powell, and some reassuring news on inflation, appear to be infusing optimism for an interest rate cut,” they said.

“Bond funds saw their first weekly inflow in six weeks. Rates on high yield bonds dropped even more, mirroring the improving equity market,” they noted.

In the North American insurance composite, advancers led decliners by 61 to 46, with seven of the 12 industry groups in the composite ending the week in positive territory.

The two-best performing groups were micro cap insurers, up 9.0%, and life, annuity and accident insurers, up 3.5%.

Global P&C insurers were also among the week's strongest performers, adding 1.6% on average.

The rise was driven by Berkshire Hathaway, which increased by 2.2% last week.

In contrast, Chubb lost 2.3% while shares in AIG were flat.

Standard commercial insurers rose 0.6% on average.

Shares in Travelers, the largest company in the group by market capitalisation, increased 1.3%.

The Hartford's share price was up by 0.8% last week after the carrier reported consensus-beating core earnings per share, despite a 4.1 percentage point deterioration in its combined ratio for the first quarter.

Share in Cincinnati Financial rose 1.1%.

The group of reinsurers was flat, edging up just 0.1%.

Everest Group and Reinsurance Group of America – the two largest companies in the cohort – rose 0.9% and 1.8%, respectively.

In contrast, RenaissanceRe was down 2.2%.

Conduit Holdings led the losses in the group, with its shares falling 3.3% in the week, followed by Greenlight Capital, down 2.8%.

The two worst-performing groups in the composite were other brokers and distributors, down 3.7%, and global brokers, down 3.6%.

Among the latter, shares in Aon recorded the largest fall, plummeting 8.6% for the week after it reported an earnings miss.

Meanwhile, shares in WTW fell 5.9% while Arthur J Gallagher shed 2.1%.

The Stonybrook-Weild North American Insurance composite is up 7.1% 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.