Managed Care & Health Insurers
The medical-cost-trend cycle in one basket: utilization spikes, Medicare Advantage rate pressure, and PBM scrutiny all hit here first. Historically violent repricings in both directions — a sentiment gauge for the whole healthcare payer complex.
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 | -1.2% | +2.9% | +1.4% | +1.3% | +3.4% | +31.4% | +41.0% |
| vs S&P 500 | -0.8% | +2.7% | +1.7% | -4.6% | +2.9% | +16.1% | +18.0% |
Inside the basket · 6 stocks
Current members and the reasoning behind each inclusion. Returns are for individual stocks.
| Why it’s included | Added | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HUM | Medicare Advantage pure-play torque | -1.2% | +4.1% | +4.3% | +57.9% | 2026-06-11 |
| ELV | Blues franchise scale | -1.8% | +3.3% | +3.4% | +17.4% | 2026-06-11 |
| CNC | Medicaid + exchanges exposure | -1.4% | +3.5% | +1.9% | +62.9% | 2026-06-11 |
| CVS | Aetna + retail health + PBM | -0.5% | +4.0% | +1.1% | +24.7% | 2026-06-11 |
| CI | Commercial + PBM mix | -1.3% | +1.3% | +0.0% | +3.8% | 2026-06-11 |
| UNH | Scale payer + Optum services | -1.0% | +1.1% | -2.4% | +21.9% | 2026-06-11 |
How this basket is built
Equal-weighted, monthly-rebalanced, buy-and-hold between rebalances; dated membership changes take effect same-day.
Tracked since 2026-06-11. 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.
Cross-checked against IHF. Daily return correlation: 0.93 across 1678 sessions. cap-weighted and UNH-heavy; also holds providers, who sit on the other side of the cost-trend trade
Membership history & changes
- expand
FW 3000 pass: added MOH, OSCR, ALHC — names outside the S&P 500 but inside our broad universe; they count only in the FW 3000 version of this basket. Effective-dated to creation so the broad backtest covers the full set. The S&P 500 basket is unchanged.
- review
Widening pass: the remaining six are the complete S&P 500 managed-care complex; providers are deliberately excluded (utilization helps them and hurts insurers — mixing the two would cancel the signal). Reference pinned to IHF with that caveat.
- drop
MOH removed — no longer in the S&P 500 universe (flagged by the widening pass’s constituent check).
- create
Initial composition: the payer complex.