All Healthcare Assets

A drug or device that fails a late-stage trial, or is turned down by a regulator, can remove a large part of a smaller company's expected future revenue at once. Large companies with many products are less exposed to any one result, which is why their share prices usually move less on such news.

In part. People keep buying medicines and treatment in a downturn, so the sector's revenue tends to hold up better than that of cyclical sectors. Biotechnology is the exception: many biotech companies have no profits yet and trade on trial outcomes and funding conditions.

The Health Care Select Sector SPDR (XLV) holds the large US healthcare companies. For narrower exposure there are biotechnology funds such as IBB and XBI and medical-device funds such as IHI. Each has its own page with its holdings, fees and returns.

Clinical-trial failures, regulatory decisions, patent expiries that open a drug to cheaper generic competition, and changes to drug pricing and reimbursement. For insurers, the cost of medical claims against the premiums they set is the main driver.

Each asset's analysis, technical indicators and ratings are rebuilt once a day, and prices are refreshed several times a day. Every page shows the date of its figures, so you can see how current each one is.