Sector Evolution · the 11 SPDR sector ETFs · total return, each range re-based to 100 at its start
Every one of the 11 GICS sectors as its own total-return index, all
starting at 100 on the first day of the selected range. Switching range re-bases the chart,
so the ranking on screen is always the ranking over that window. Hover a line to name it. Use
the toggles below the chart to take crowded lines out of the way.
What it measures. The eleven S&P sectors as the funds you can actually own. Every
line starts at 100 on the first day of whichever range is selected, so All measures from
January 2016 and 1Y measures from a year ago. Changing the range re-bases the chart rather
than zooming into it, and that is the point: the winners and losers of a window are only
legible when the lines all set out from the same place, instead of entering it wherever a
decade of divergence had already left them. The left scale is the index level, which is what
$100 put in at the start of the range became. The right scale is the same thing read as
cumulative gain over that range. The scale is logarithmic, so equal vertical distances are
equal percentage moves. The multiple beside each sector in the legend follows the range too.
How it is built. Adjusted closes, meaning total return with dividends reinvested.
That is not a cosmetic choice: Utilities, Staples, Energy and Real Estate pay several times
what Technology pays, and on price alone they would be understated by tens of points of
cumulative gain. A chart whose job is ranking sectors against each other has to compare what
a holder actually earned. Communication Services is the one line that does not begin in 2016
on the All range, because GICS did not create the sector until September 2018: its fund starts
at 100 on its own first traded day rather than drawing a flat line through years it did not
exist. On any range that opens after mid-2018 it starts alongside everything else.
How to read it. The map above is a snapshot of what is turning now. This is the decade
that produced it. The ranking is the point, and so is the spread: the distance between the top
line and the bottom one is the cost of being right about equities and wrong about which sector
to own. Watch where lines change order, because a durable rotation shows up here as a crossing
rather than a wiggle. Turn on the S&P 500 reference to separate a sector that is genuinely
leading from one that is merely rising with everything else.
Why it matters. Rotation scores are short-horizon by construction. This is the
long-horizon context they sit in: which sectors have compounded, which have spent ten years
going sideways, and whether today's leader is climbing off a low base or extending a trend
that has already run.
Total-return indices built from public ETF history. Indices, not investment advice.
Communication Services has no history before June 2018.