The Winning Sectors

Despite all the good economic news and the continued strength of the stock market, earnings growth is expected to slow to a crawl this year for large U.S. companies. In fact, during the first quarter of 2019, earnings per share declined from a year earlier for most of the S&P 500’s sectors, six out of the total of eleven.

Which sectors were able to grow earnings? These are the fortunate five:

• Health care, 9.8 percent
• Real estate, 7.4 percent
• Financials, 6.2 percent
• Industrials, 5.9 percent
• Information technology, 4.0 percent 

According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, only three of these sectors are expected to continue to show earnings growth when the second-quarter numbers are revealed: Financials, Health care, and Industrials.