Stats › Concentration and breadth › Sector returns
S&P 500 sector returns by year
The S&P 500 isn't one thing. It's eleven sectors that spend most of their time doing completely different things, and in any given year the gap between the best one and the worst one is far bigger than most people expect.
This page is the year by year record for the last decade. Which sector won, which one lost, and what that looks like when you line the years up next to each other. I put it together because sector rotation is one of those ideas that sounds obvious in hindsight and turns out to be very hard to do in advance, and the data shows you why quite clearly.
Everything here is total return, so dividends are included. One source, dated, linked at the bottom. Go check it yourself.
Over the ten years to 2025, Information Technology compounded at 20.75% a year, the best of any sector, while Materials managed 8.26%. Year to year the leadership swings violently: Energy was the worst sector in 2018 at -18.1% and 2020 at -33.7%, then the best in 2021 at +54.6% and 2022 at +65.7%. Technology was best in 2023 at +57.8% and worst in 2022 at -28.2%. No sector has led two years running in this decade except Information Technology in 2019 and 2020.
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Below this point there are 8 sections, 1 chart, 1 table and 1 named source, roughly 1150 words of it. Every figure carries the source it came from and the date the data is from.
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