Energy Leads S&P 500 Sectors With 43.6% Gain

Health care hit a record high on Nov. 4 while communication services is the only sector still in negative territory this year.

Updated on Nov. 12, 2026 in Economic Indicators

Energy Leads S&P 500 Sectors With 43.6% Gain

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The energy sector leads all S&P 500 sectors with a 43.6% year-to-date gain in 2026, while the State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 ETF is up 12.5% on a total return basis. Six of the 11 Select Sector SPDR ETFs are ahead of that broad benchmark.

Why it matters

Sector leadership has rotated sharply this year, with energy and health care outpacing the broader market while communication services has lost ground. For investors across the United States, the spread between sectors shows how concentrated and volatile market gains have been.

Year-to-date returns show energy XLE up 43.6% and health care XLV up 22.7%, against 12.5% for the S&P 500 ETF SPYM. Communication services is the only sector down, at 6.9%, and XLE sits 10% below its end-of-October peak.

The players

State Street Global Advisors

State Street Global Advisors is the asset manager behind the Select Sector SPDR ETFs, one of the largest sector-fund families in the United States.

Eli Lilly

Eli Lilly is a major pharmaceutical company whose market value surpassed $1 trillion and which has driven a large share of health care sector gains this year.

The details

Energy stocks rallied as oil prices soared following the Iran war, while health care gains were driven largely by Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, AbbVie and Merck. Eli Lilly, worth more than $1 trillion, has contributed more than 5 percentage points of the health care sector's return by itself. Technology, tracked by XLK, rose as much as 41% in early October before giving back most of that gain.

Early October: XLK reached its peak gain of 41%.
End of October: XLE reached its peak.
Nov. 4: XLV hit a record high.
Nov. 5: XLK fell to its 2026 low, up 13% year to date.
Nov. 19: Anthropic's IPO is expected to begin trading.

Market Landscape

The 2026 divergence tracked by the Select Sector SPDR family shows energy and health care leading while communication services lags, a rotation away from the tech-led gains of early October. Technology's 41% peak gain then faded to a 13% year-to-date gain by Nov. 5.

Investors holding broad index funds or sector ETFs see returns concentrated in energy and health care this year, so portfolio weightings matter. Retirement and brokerage account balances tied to the S&P 500 are up 12.5% on a total return basis.

The takeaway

Sector returns this year have diverged widely, so checking how your holdings are weighted across the 11 sectors can reveal concentration risk that a headline index return hides.