Hospitals & Providers
The other side of the medical-cost-trend trade: the utilization that squeezes managed care is revenue here. Hospitals, surgery centers, behavioral and rehab, dialysis, home-based care, and the reference labs that price volume. Run it against managed-care — divergence between the two baskets IS the cost-trend signal. Policy risk cuts through both: site-neutral payment proposals and ACA subsidy expiry hit providers' payer mix directly.
Performance
Follow the theme against the wider market.
Series before each basket's creation date are a backtest of the membership as of creation; live tracking starts at creation.
| Return | 1 day | 5 days | 20 days | 60 days | MTD | YTD | 1 year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basket | -0.3% | -1.3% | -0.1% | +12.2% | -0.2% | +18.5% | +18.9% |
| vs S&P 500 | +0.0% | -1.5% | +0.2% | +5.5% | -0.7% | +4.7% | -0.5% |
Inside the basket · 5 stocks
Current members and the reasoning behind each inclusion. Returns are for individual stocks.
| Why it’s included | Added | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LH | Reference-lab volume duopoly (Labcorp) | -1.4% | -2.5% | +2.6% | +31.3% | 2026-07-21 |
| DVA | Dialysis duopoly half — a chronic-utilization annuity | +1.3% | +1.8% | +0.1% | +61.9% | 2026-07-21 |
| DGX | The duopoly's other half (Quest) | -0.9% | -2.3% | -0.5% | +38.5% | 2026-07-21 |
| HCA | Scale operator with the best payer mix and capital-return discipline | -1.0% | -3.1% | -2.0% | -12.9% | 2026-07-21 |
| UHS | Acute care plus the behavioral-health franchise | +0.3% | -1.1% | -2.1% | -21.9% | 2026-07-21 |
How this basket is built
Equal-weighted, monthly-rebalanced, buy-and-hold between rebalances; dated membership changes take effect same-day.
Tracked since 2026-07-21. Membership decisions are documented below.
Read the methodology →Reading the returns
Basket returns include dividends. “vs S&P 500” compares the basket’s compounded growth with the benchmark’s. Green means positive; red means negative.
Membership history & changes
- create
Initial composition: 13 names — hospitals (HCA, UHS, THC, CYH), surgery centers and rehab (SGRY, EHC), behavioral (ACHC), dialysis (DVA), labs (LH, DGX), and post-acute/home-based care (ENSG, OPCH, ADUS). Built as the mirror of managed-care: utilization flows from payors to providers. No reference pinned — no listed pure-provider fund exists; IHF blends payors with providers and is already pinned to managed-care. Considered and excluded: AMED (UnitedHealth acquisition closed — delisted), SEM (absent from the current FW 3000 data), USPH and PNTG (sub-scale).