Risks and rewards within the healthcare sector

Article Excerpt

Demand for healthcare products and services has been growing for decades—and this will continue as the population of the developed world grows older and medical services expand. Significant new developments in the field of medical technology and innovation will further boost the demand for medical services. In this Supplement, we take a look at the performance of the broad global and U.S. healthcare indexes—plus we explore the performance of the subsectors that make up those healthcare indexes. Market matching returns, but with less volatility Healthcare companies have in general performed well over the past 20 years, and many large healthcare stocks have beaten the overall market. Growing revenue and profits have contributed to this performance. Globally, the indexes that measure the performance of a broad spectrum of healthcare companies have kept pace with the major equity indexes. However, healthcare stocks have been less volatile than the overall markets with considerably less downside risk when those major markets declined sharply (see table below). In addition, U.S….