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Large Cap Healthcare Stocks Show Gains in a Tough Volatile Week

• Healthcare and Biopharma show nice gains in a volatile week.
• Unexpected weakness with economic data especially jobs revive “hard  landing” discussions.
• The 2-year Treasury Yield is dropping fast now at 3.872% so expect money market rates to follow.

Investors were shaken by weak economic data last Thursday with the ISM manufacturing index down. Then on Friday piling on the bad news was unemployment rose to 4.35 in July as the U.S. added 114,000 jobs, below the 175,000 expected. This comes a day after a Fed speak event on Wednesday where Powell withheld cuts but assuring his audience that cuts were coming in September. Now with concerns about a weaker economy, Fed futures suggest a good chance of a rate cut of  50 basis points so stay tuned.

Just as we are getting comfortable with a rotation out of volatile tech stocks and moving into 2024 laggard groups like small caps we need to consider a recession by Q4. The Dow lost  2.18 %, the S&P about 2%, and the QQQ  down over 3%. We were enjoying a SMID rally this summer largely based on lower rates ahead and we would expect the biotech bull  to continue through  2024. But this market rout has hurt sentiment and curbed momentum wihich has provided underlying theme of this market. We were just a new highs in mid-July right? But large cap healthcare and biopharma stocks showed gains except for Eli Lily and Merck. Lily has been the hottest of the biotechs up 38% YTD and now faced with potential competition for GLP-1 related products  in 2025. LLY reports on Tuesday. And Merck dropped almost 10% despite a beat on sales and earnings on concerns about its Gardisil HPV vaccine, Our top pick Abbvie (ABBV)  was up 14% this month and 22% YTD. Q2 Global Revenues were $14.46B with strong contribution from a broad product portfolio and pipeline in oncology, immunology and now neuroscience.

SMID biotechs and their proxy ETFs did not fare well in this “risk-off’ situation with the XBI down  5%, the ARKG down 9.59% and the IBB down 2.76%. Our life science funds are doing well despite weakness this week with PRHSX up 10% YTD.  The Janus Health Sciences Fund is a Five Star Rated Fund (JNGLX) is up 13% YTD.

The MedTECH sector also did well this week with ABT and JNJ showing good gains and the (IHI) U.S Medical Device ETF up 5.7%. The Fidelity Select Medical Technology Fund (FSMEX) is lagging but gained 2.23% YTD so this could be another good diversification play.

The AI playbook  seems hard to escape when the MOMentum turns against you. The XLK is down over 10% month to date but the SMH has been in free fall since JULY 13, and down 17.15% MTD, but is still up 24.91% YTD as investors try to protect their gains.

So despite a severe sell-off it looks like healthcare stocks are holding on to their reputation as a defensive sector during volatile markets . The XLV is still up over 10% YTD.

Wait I thought the GDP was growing at 2.8%?

More By This Author:

Healthcare Stocks Are Coming On Strong In July Led By Biotech
Biotech Bull Market Is Intact But SMIDs Are Too Volatile
Biotechnology Stocks Showed Nice Gains For The Week-Look For The Momentum To Continue