By Carlos Pallordet
LONDON, Sept 15 (Reuters) - (The Insurer) – The North American insurance composite, compiled by investment banks Stonybrook Capital and Weild & Co, rose 0.2% last week, lagging behind Wall Street, which posted its strongest weekly gain in over a month despite a disappointing jobs report.
The S&P 500 rose 1.6% while the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 increased by 1.9%.
The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average added 1.0% for the week.
Stonybrook-Weild highlighted the benchmark revision issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which showed that 911,000 fewer jobs were created for the year through March 2025 than previously reported. This was the largest downward adjustment since at least 2000.
The U.S. economy also added just 22,000 jobs in August 2025, significantly below the consensus forecast of 75,000.
“Ironically, lower employment may increase margins and deliver higher stock prices, most likely in businesses that use AI to deliver productivity gains,” Stonybrook-Weild said.
The investment banks noted that the Dow Jones Transportation Index slipped 0.6% over the week, a move that, while not definitive, often serves as an early indicator of broader economic trends. They also pointed to a flatter yield curve as another potential sign of slowing momentum ahead.
“The good news is that a 50 bp rate cut is now all but certain when the Fed meets this coming week. And so, bad job news is good news for the stock market,” they concluded.
In the North American insurance composite, advancers led decliners by 71 to 41, with nine of the 12 industry groups advancing in the week.
The two best-performing groups were coastal insurers, up 3.9%, and life, annuity and accident insurers, up 2.4%. The two worst-performing groups were insurance service providers, down 2.7%, and global P&C, down 1.1%.
Berkshire Hathaway fell 1.3% for the week, dragging down both the peer group and overall composite due to the company’s substantial weighting within the index.
Shares in AIG retreated 0.4%, while Chubb, the only other constituent in the industry group, added 0.3%
Meanwhile, the group of reinsurers advanced 1.7% for the week.
Conduit Holdings was the outstanding performer, rising 6.0% in the week to Friday.
Everest Group and RenaissanceRe, the first and third-largest companies in the group by market capitalization, both added 2.8%. SiriusPoint advanced 1.4%.
At the other end of the spectrum, shares in Greenlight Capital fell 2.1% for the week.
The cohort of personal lines insurers was also among the most dynamic industry groups within the P&C subsector, with a rise of 1.3% for the week.
Insurtech Hippo had the largest increase in the group, up 12.2%, followed by peers Root and Lemonade, up 7.0% and 4.6%, respectively.
Leader Progressive rose 1.8% while Allstate, the second-largest company in the cohort by market capitalization, retreated 0.6%.
Shares in Mercury General rose 2.5% for the week.
Meanwhile, global brokers remained relatively flat, eking out a gain of just 0.1%.
Shares in WTW and Aon rose 2.9% and 0.4%, respectively.
In contrast, Arthur J Gallagher and Marsh McLennan slipped 0.6 and 0.4%, respectively.
The Stonybrook-Weild North American insurance composite is up 6.0% 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.