S&P 500: Why Energy Sector Is A Leading Indicator

2026-02-01 08:59:50 ET

The energy sector started outperforming

While news headlines are heavily dominated by the rise and fall of precious metals recently, this article wants to draw your attention to a development that is less discussed. This is the performance—or performance, more precisely - of the energy sector when compared to the overall market. To wit, the next chart shows the market sectors and indices we monitor on our dashboard. BTW, it is coded as a Google Sheet, and you are welcome to download it. As seen, in the past quarter, the energy sector (as approximated by XLE) posted the best price performance with a 16% gain, outperforming all major market indices such as the DJI , SP500 , NASDAQ , and also small cap ( RTY ) by a wide margin. The outperformance is even wider in terms of total return, as XLE currently yields 2.9%, the highest yield on our dashboard except for the REIT sector represented by VNQ....

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