A Look Back at the Sectors

There is one trading day left in the 2012 calendar year, but we might as well start taking a look at the year behind us, and see what the market did for us over the past 12 months. Among the ten sectors in the S&P 500, the biggest winner by far was the financial sector, which was up 24.5 percent. The leading stock in that group was Bank of America, whose share price more than doubled.

The only sector among the ten to lose ground this year was utilities, which were down 4.2 percent. In the middle, here are the eight other S&P 500 sectors:

• Consumer discretionary: up 19.5 percent
• Health care: up 13.8 percent
• Telecom services: up 11.2 percent
• Information technology: up 10.8 percent
• Industrials: up 10.4 percent
• Materials: up 10.0 percent
• Consumer staples: up 6.3 percent
• Energy: up 0.2 percent