There's a quote attributed to Mark Twain that reads, "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
Most investing mistakes don't come from the things we missed. They come from the things we were certain about, right up until they were proven untrue.
This year, the thing the market knows for sure is that healthcare is broken as a sector. Its weighting within the S&P 500 has shrunk to a level that pre-dates my existence. That fact alone could be interpreted as if healthcare companies are fundamentally very sick, and should be avoided.
I guess you're already asking, "So, is it?"
Like every good answer to a hard question... it depends. Averages and catch-all conclusions are at the root of a potential misread.
That's the trap I want to walk you through this week. Because when you stop quoting healthcare as one number and start considering the roughly 1,400 companies standing behind it (and what it is being compared to) the "dying sector" moniker becomes far less binary.
And you just might find that some parts of this unpopular sector actually have a clean bill of health.
Sincerely,
Mitchell Lawler, Senior Investment Editor
