It is time once again for the Insurance Sector Snapshot, courtesy of The New York Times, here.
Instructions for navigating the Snapshot are given in it. A couple of things about it are pretty easy to understand, and if I can understand them, believe me, that makes them easy to understand.
Allstate's recent poor financial news -- including it first annual posted loss as a public corporation, and its termination of 1,000 jobs -- clearly puts it in the position of the weakest "one-week price return," but no Insurance Company in the Sector was weaker than AIG in its "one-year price return".
Life Insurance Companies have been crying poor in recent days, raising the specters of terrible things that might happen if they are not given financial help including Federal Taxpayer Funds -- although as the National Association of Insurance Commissioners determined in their vote yesterday, these same Life Insurance Companies did not prove their case for emergency relief by putting on evidence to back up their claims. (See today's earlier post on the NAIC vote.) The Snapshot shows that the Life Insurance Companies turned in by far the top financial performers in the Insurance Sector over the last week.
The Insurance Sector as a whole compares very poorly with the rest of the market. The S&P 500 is listed as losing 38.0 percent over the last year, in a box accompanying the Snapshot on page B8, Business Day Section, of the Friday, January 30, 2009 National Edition of The New York Times. The same box shows that the Insurance Sector has lost 65.3% in value over the last year compared with the rest of the market. Only the Financials Sector has performed more poorly in that regard than the Insurance Sector, with Financials reportedly losing a collective 66.9% of their value.
Please Read The Disclaimer.
Postscript of Monday, February 2, 2009: AND HERE TOO: Sector Snapshot: Insurance, Online, February 2, 2009.
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