US Industries

Every industry the SEC classifies, ranked by how it actually behaves — what it does when rates move, how much of it is really one position, and how heavily it is sold short.

The ranking that does not exist anywhere else

Rate sensitivity is the median correlation between a company's daily return and the daily move in the 10-year Treasury yield. Building it needs that correlation for every one of 5,250 securities, which is why you will not find this table elsewhere. Energy sits at the top and homebuilders at the bottom, which is the result anyone would predict — and is the reason to trust the rest of the column.

Move most with rates Move against rates Trade as one bet Most companies Most shorted 152 industries · 8+ companies each · SEC classification
IndustryCompaniesRatesOne betBetaDays to cover
Crude Petroleum & Natural Gas 64 +0.27 49% -0.29 4.6
Petroleum Refining 17 +0.24 19% -0.27 4.6
Drilling Oil & Gas Wells 11 +0.21 39% 0.33 7.5
Natural Gas Transmission 17 +0.10 20% 0.03 4.8
Oil & Gas Field Services, Nec 14 +0.08 22% 0.83 4.3
Oil & Gas Field Machinery & Equipment 11 +0.08 26% 0.86 4.7
Security & Commodity Brokers, Dealers, Exchanges & Services 8 +0.05 30% 0.30 3.1
Water Transportation 12 -0.02 13% 0.50 5.4
Deep Sea Foreign Transportation Of Freight 28 -0.03 79% 0.57 2.8
Fire, Marine & Casualty Insurance 47 -0.03 60% -0.06 4.8
Retail-Grocery Stores 9 -0.04 31% -0.05 7.4
Insurance Agents, Brokers & Service 14 -0.04 32% -0.18 6.9
Industrial Organic Chemicals 15 -0.04 5% 0.64 4.9
Services-Computer Programming Services 11 -0.05 11% 0.53 5.6
Services-Management Consulting Services 15 -0.05 10% 0.32 4.9
Services-Educational Services 13 -0.06 31% 0.33 4.5
Hospital & Medical Service Plans 10 -0.06 48% 0.39 4.7
Services-Prepackaged Software 135 -0.07 48% 0.87 4.4
Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. 43 -0.08 8% 1.30 3.9
Medicinal Chemicals & Botanical Products 8 -0.08 33% 1.23 4.1
Services-Help Supply Services 11 -0.08 21% 0.39 6.1
Miscellaneous Electrical Machinery, Equipment & Supplies 22 -0.09 9% 2.89 5.1
Security Brokers, Dealers & Flotation Companies 21 -0.09 17% 1.26 3.3
Services-Computer Processing & Data Preparation 37 -0.10 9% 0.89 4.5
Natural Gas Distribution 10 -0.10 19% -0.19 6.2
Services-Computer Integrated Systems Design 24 -0.10 5% 0.95 6.2
Retail-Eating Places 30 -0.11 46% 0.71 5.3
Services-Business Services, Nec 69 -0.11 13% 0.90 4.9
Services-Miscellaneous Amusement & Recreation 11 -0.11 12% 0.70 7.4
Retail-Retail Stores, Nec 10 -0.11 1% 1.32 3.7
Communications Equipment, Nec 9 -0.11 0% 2.49 4.3
Surety Insurance 8 -0.11 15% 0.09 5.0
Radio & TV Broadcasting & Communications Equipment 17 -0.11 7% 2.13 4.1
Cable & Other Pay Television Services 13 -0.11 16% 0.50 4.8
Search, Detection, Navagation, Guidance, Aeronautical Sys 8 -0.11 8% 1.01 3.5
Computer Communications Equipment 9 -0.11 2% 1.49 3.6
Life Insurance 16 -0.12 21% 0.68 4.3
Instruments For Meas & Testing Of Electricity & Elec Signals 9 -0.12 3% 2.26 3.8
Retail-Catalog & Mail-Order Houses 15 -0.12 4% 1.35 4.6
Radiotelephone Communications 11 -0.12 0% 0.45 3.4

Top 40 of 152 industries with five or more listed members. Ranked views require eight, because a median over five companies is not a median and every extreme would otherwise be a four-company classification.

All industries152 with five or more listed companies

Reading the rates column

It is the median correlation, across the industry, between a company's daily return and the daily change in the 10-year Treasury yield. Positive means the industry tends to rise on days when yields rise.

The extremes are the sanity check. Energy producers sit at the top: they move with inflation, and so do yields. Homebuilders sit at the bottom, more negative than anything else, because their customers borrow — a mortgage rate is the product. Airlines, mortgage lenders and other borrowers follow them. None of that was put in by hand; it falls out of the correlation, which is the reason to believe the middle of the table too.

It is a correlation over one year of daily returns, not a forecast and not a duration. A number near zero means the industry did not move with rates this year, which is a different claim from saying it never does.

Reading the “one bet” column

Of the ten closest matches for each company in an industry — closest by one-year return correlation, measured against the entire market — what share are in the same industry. High means the label describes something real and the companies move as a unit. Low means the SEC groups them and the market does not.

This is the column to read before deciding that owning five companies from one industry is diversification. In the tightest industries it is closer to owning one thing five times.

Why SIC and not a sector scheme

The Standard Industrial Classification is coarse, it was designed in 1937, and it has some genuinely strange corners. It is also the classification the SEC itself puts on filings, it is public, and it is free of anyone's proprietary judgement about what counts as a sector. Every widely used alternative is licensed. Using the official one means the grouping here can be checked against the filing rather than taken on trust.

Company-level detail is on each security page; the rest of the market data is on the Markets overview.