Wednesday Sector Leaders: Technology & Communications, Industrial

Looking at the sectors faring best as of midday Wednesday, shares of Technology & Communications companies are outperforming other sectors, higher by 1.7%. Within the sector, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co (Symbol: HPE) and Seagate Technology Holdings PLC (Symbol: STX) are two large stocks leading the way, showing a gain of 12.7% and 5.8%, respectively. Among technology ETFs, one ETF following the sector is the Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (Symbol: XLK), which is up 2.0% on the day, and up 12.09% year-to-date. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co, meanwhile, is up 17.61% year-to-date, and Seagate Technology Holdings PLC is up 14.67% year-to-date. Combined, HPE and STX make up approximately 0.5% of the underlying holdings of XLK.

The next best performing sector is the Industrial sector, up 0.8%. Among large Industrial stocks, Lam Research Corp (Symbol: LRCX) and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd (Symbol: NCLH) are the most notable, showing a gain of 4.9% and 3.2%, respectively. One ETF closely tracking Industrial stocks is the Industrial Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLI), which is up 0.7% in midday trading, and up 7.86% on a year-to-date basis. Lam Research Corp, meanwhile, is up 23.79% year-to-date, and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd, is down 8.01% year-to-date.

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 Wednesday. As you can see, five sectors are up on the day, while three sectors are down.