US insurance stocks still in the red as Wall Street investors attempt to buy market dip

By Carlos Pallordet

April 7 - The S&P 500 index attempted a reversal into positive territory in morning trading, but most P&C stocks remained in the red.

Insurance stocks were subject to volatile trading this morning as investors grappled with increased volatility fuelled by trade war tensions.

The S&P 500 briefly moved into positive territory after opening 2.4% lower. This follows a 4.8% drop on Thursday and a 6.0% decline on Friday, triggered by the U.S.'s announcement of broad tariffs on Wednesday and China's retaliatory measures on Friday.

US property and casualty insurers’ shares held relatively well on Thursday but faced significant losses on Friday.

The downturn persisted this morning, with the majority of carriers’ and brokers’ shares in the red.

Among the carriers, Global Indemnity and Kinsale led the losses, dropping 4.6% and 4.5% respectively, as of 10:12 a.m. ET (1512 GMT).

SiriusPoint and Markel were both down 3.6%, while Palomar had decreased by 3.1%.

Among the larger capitalisation carriers, The Hartford was trading down 2.3%, while Allstate had dipped 1.7%.

Brokers’ shares were also in the red on Monday, with Ryan Specialty down 3.6%, Aon decreasing 2.5%, and Gallagher losing 2.4%.

The North American insurance composite, compiled by investment banks Stonybrook Capital and Weild & Co, lost 7.2% in the week to Friday, with 106 out of 109 constituents in the benchmark ending in negative territory. However, as of Friday, it remained 2.5% up for the year-to-date, in contrast to all major Wall Street indices, which are down for the year.