Our rating on the Financial sector is Over-Weight. The Fed's rate-hike campaign is expanding net interest margins for banks. We also look for recovery in fee-based businesses, bond issuance, and M&A as the rate cycle winds down. Still, with inflation running hot, companies may cut back on hiring and investments, and thus on business loans. As of the end of April, the sector accounted for 13% of the S&P 500. The sector was outperforming the market with a gain of 12.0%. It underperformed the market in 2023, with a gain of 7% compared to a gain of 24% for the S&P 500. The sector includes money center banks, regional banks, investment banks and brokerages, exchanges, insurers, and financial data companies. Here are the Financial companies that either are on our Focus List or are used in our model portfolios.

Sustainable Impact Investing, or ESG investing, is gaining traction not only with Argus Research clients but also with the global investment community. BlackRock CEO Lawrence Fink, who oversees approximately $9 trillion in assets, announced in January 2020 that his firm would be investing in companies that are making progress on sustainability. He doubled down in his January 2021 letter, calling on company managements to disclose their plans for making their businesses "compatible with a net-zero economy" by 2050. As assets have flowed in over the past 40 years, Sustainable Impact Investing has evolved. The discipline, originally known as Socially Responsible Investing, focused at first on excluding companies that conducted business in South Africa, or participated in industries such as tobacco, alcohol, and firearms. Performance of these initial strategies lagged, and the approach has been modified. Now, instead of merely identifying industries to avoid, the discipline promotes "sustainable" business practices across all industries that can have an "impact" on global issues such as climate, hunger, poverty, disease, shelter, and workers' rights.

Vickers Stock Research, a subsidiary of Argus Research Group, tracks and analyzes insider trading and institutional stock ownership trends. Form 13-Fs, which institutions must file to report their holdings, are due 45 days after the end of calendar quarters, and have now come in from 1Q24. We like to review the 13Fs of the major activist investors, including Carl Icahn, Trian Fund Management, Jana Partners, and ValueAct Holdings, among others, to determine their core holdings and new purchases. Activist investing has evolved in recent years and is now less about generating a short-term return on an underpriced stock and more about achieving long-term returns through an active management/investor partnership. Activists have made progress in the past year with high-profile investments into blue-chip companies such as Fedex and Union Pacific. According to Vickers, here are recent new purchases and key holdings of activist investors and other high-profile money managers such as Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway and Ken Griffin of Citadel Advisors LLC.

The Vickers Top Buyers & Sellers is a daily report that identifies the five companies the largest insider purchase transactions based on the dollar value of the transactions as well as the five companies the largest insider sales transactions based on the dollar value of the transactions.