NEW YORK: Second-quarter strength in U.S. healthcare stocks is almost as reliable for Americans as warming weather and the start of baseball season. This year, however, the already-lagging sector may struggle to sustain any kind of rally.
To some degree, healthcare is suffering from its own success. Healthcare was the best-performing major S&P 500 sector last year, when the overall stock market stumbled. Earnings could provide a boost, starting on Tuesday. Results are due from diversified healthcare manufacturer Johnson & Johnson and insurer UnitedHealth Group Inc, the biggest and third-biggest U.S. healthcare companies by market value, respectively.
But the clouds that have rained on healthcare's performance so far in 2019 are not expected to dissipate soon. “It’s a bad week where all these things have kind of combined and people just want out,” Jeff Jonas, a healthcare portfolio manager with Gabelli Funds, said on Friday. Shares of life-science tool and healthcare equipment companies, viewed as relatively immune from policy concerns, have outperformed their healthcare brethren this year. But they also now trade at expensive valuations compared to their five-year averages.
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