When will they boom (lend, insurance, sales, corporations)

[whitegiant]

How come the healthcare and education sectors ever boom like alot of other sectors of the economy do. Do you think that they ever will and if so will they have as hard of busts as the other areas of the economy do when they bust after a boom.

[chet everett]

Not sure what you mean by "boom". There are a lack of direct investment opportunities in the sectors you mention -- not like you can buy stock in Harvard or Stanford and the majority of health care providers / HMOs are organized as not for profits. Of course that does not mean that folks that do work for them don't make very handsome income, but the nature of the structure does not lend themselves to the runup in value that other kinds of firms have seen. There are those that felt the same way about life/property/casualty insurance firms and that is what motivated many of the them to restructure into more common stock holder owned corporations. Unfortunately the melt down of financial companies undid the gains...

[Stac2007]

Originally Posted by whitegiant

How come the healthcare and education sectors ever boom like alot of other sectors of the economy do. Do you think that they ever will and if so will they have as hard of busts as the other areas of the economy do when they bust after a boom.

How many teachers will a school district hire when it does not have the money to pay them? Guess what? As few as possible! In fact school districts are letting people go, not hiring.

[user_id]

I think Healthcare/education is going to boom, they are both on the cusp of some new and interesting technologies. This does not mean you can buy some mutual fund and ride the wave though, the new technologies are likely to create some creative destruction and many firms that you may not think of as having anything to do with healthcare and education will end up as major leaders.

Just think of the music industry....10 years ago did you think apple was going ot be a major player?

[dsnellen]

Originally Posted by whitegiant

How come the healthcare and education sectors ever boom like alot of other sectors of the economy do. Do you think that they ever will and if so will they have as hard of busts as the other areas of the economy do when they bust after a boom.

Education is not a sector. For the most part, it is a government provided service. Except for several companies that have privatized selected districts, I am not sure how you would 'invest' in education.

The Healthcare sector as a whole is not currently doing well. The best performing ETF is FXH and it has only a 6% annualized return over the past 6 months. Most Healthcare ETFs still have negative annualized returns from 1-month on. The two indexes, ^NBI for Biotechnology and ^HCX for Healthcare are both showing negative annualized returns from 1 month out to 5 years. With Obama's plan to nationalize healthcare, I would not expect Healthcare to 'boom' anytime soon. I would look in other sectors for investments.

[hamiltonra25]

Originally Posted by dsnellen

Education is not a sector. For the most part, it is a government provided service. Except for several companies that have privatized selected districts, I am not sure how you would 'invest' in education.

The Healthcare sector as a whole is not currently doing well. The best performing ETF is FXH and it has only a 6% annualized return over the past 6 months. Most Healthcare ETFs still have negative annualized returns from 1-month on. The two indexes, ^NBI for Biotechnology and ^HCX for Healthcare are both showing negative annualized returns from 1 month out to 5 years. With Obama's plan to nationalize healthcare, I would not expect Healthcare to 'boom' anytime soon. I would look in other sectors for investments.

Have to agree whole heartily. The two areas you mentioned are going to see a large influx of government spending within the next year, especially after congress just passed a 3 trillion dollar budget for next year with a vast majority of that going into education and healthcare. However, as previously mentioned you cant buy stock in Harvard or Standford. You can invest in companies that have a hand in the educational area, Texas Instruments (TXN) they were trading around $34 last summer, currently around $17. Wont get much of a dividend from them because of the technology sector, however analyst are expecting them to return to higher trading prices in the future. Healthcare is tanking, when prescription sales go down id say its time to start shorting....