For those that aren't aware of the dire straits that the credit crisis has put the Financial sector in, take a look at the chart below. At current levels, the S&P 500 Financial sector is down 40.7% from its peak in February of last year. The sector is now just 20.8% above its price at the start of the bull market on October 9th, 2002 and 1.58% below its price at the start of this decade.
What was recently one of the best performing sectors of the bull market has now almost become the worst. As shown in the table above, only the Health Care sector has gone up less than Financials since the start of the bull market. On the flip side, the Energy sector has gone up nearly 15 times as much as Financials. Thank you oil.
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