Tuesday Sector Leaders: Financial, Energy

Looking at the sectors faring best as of midday Tuesday, shares of Financial companies are outperforming other sectors, higher by 1.2%. Within that group, First Republic Bank (Symbol: FRC) and The Charles Schwab Corporation (Symbol: SCHW) are two of the day's stand-outs, showing a gain of 32.7% and 10.2%, respectively. Among financial ETFs, one ETF following the sector is the Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF (Symbol: XLF), which is up 1.1% on the day, and down 6.82% year-to-date. First Republic Bank, meanwhile, is down 65.70% year-to-date, and The Charles Schwab Corporation, is down 29.87% year-to-date. Combined, FRC and SCHW make up approximately 2.7% of the underlying holdings of XLF.

The next best performing sector is the Energy sector, higher by 1.2%. Among large Energy stocks, Marathon Petroleum Corp. (Symbol: MPC) and Valero Energy Corp (Symbol: VLO) are the most notable, showing a gain of 3.4% and 2.9%, respectively. One ETF closely tracking Energy stocks is the Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLE), which is up 1.2% in midday trading, and down 2.95% on a year-to-date basis. Marathon Petroleum Corp., meanwhile, is up 16.03% year-to-date, and Valero Energy Corp is up 10.70% year-to-date. Combined, MPC and VLO make up approximately 8.4% of the underlying holdings of XLE.

Comparing these stocks and ETFs on a trailing twelve month basis, below is a relative stock price performance chart, with each of the symbols shown in a different color as labeled in the legend at the bottom:

Here's a snapshot of how the S&P 500 components within the various sectors are faring in afternoon trading on Tuesday. As you can see, nine sectors are up on the day, while none of the sectors are down.

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