SEATTLE, WA — (Marketwire) — 07/11/12 —
The Russell 1000® Index of U.S. large cap stocks returned (-3.1%) during the second quarter.
Within the Index, the Utilities sector led, with a return of +8.9% for the quarter, followed by the Health Care sector, which returned +2.0%.
Six of the nine sectors within the Index had negative returns for the second quarter, with the Technology (-8.0%), Energy (-6.6%) and Materials & Processing (-5.4%) sectors showing the weakest performance.
“The strong interest in utilities has been driven by trends in two kinds of investors. Equity investors may see utilities as a safe haven in turbulent times and absolute return investors may be attracted to dividend yields of over 4%,” said Tom Goodwin, senior research director with Russell Indexes. “The outperformance of utilities may continue as long as there is fear in the equity market and low relative yields in the bond market.”
The Russell Global Index includes more than 10,000 securities in 48 countries and covers 98% of the investable global market. All securities in the index are classified according to size, region, country and sector. Daily Returns for the main components are available here:
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