資料來源:https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks-healthcare-idUSKCN10022B

With U.S. healthcare shares looking cheap and business and demographic trends supporting the industry's outlook, some investors are betting the sector will resume beating the broader market it has out-gained for much of the decade.

Bulls are seizing on healthcare's relatively strong earnings prospects as well as the prospect of an aging U.S. population providing a market for its products for years to come.

They are looking past - or have discounted - risks stemming from uncertainty over how the heavily regulated sector will fare under a new U.S. president, after criticism by politicians of high drug costs sparked a selloff of biotechnology shares last fall.

If more rhetoric at the Republican and Democratic party conventions this month again pushes share prices down, "that’s probably a buying opportunity," said John Canally, chief economic strategist for LPL Financial in Boston. He and others see healthcare benefiting as investors turn to growth sectors over the next year.

"When we take a look at the healthcare area there’s a lot of companies that have what I would consider good characteristics," such as solid revenue and earnings growth and dividends that could be raised further, said Paul Nolte, portfolio manager at Kingsview Asset Management in Chicago.

Viewing a year-long underperformance of healthcare stocks as "a good opportunity to increase our exposure," Nolte said his company has invested more heavily in healthcare stocks in the past two months than it had previously.

From 2009 to the middle of last year, the S&P 500 healthcare sector .SPXHC rose nearly 180 percent, topping the roughly 130 percent climb for the broader S&P 500 .SPX.

Since then, the healthcare sector - dragged down by biotechnology companies - is little changed while the broader market has climbed 5 percent. The sector has on average traded at a slight premium to the broader market over the past five years. Currently, the S&P healthcare index is available at a discount: trading at 15.6 times earnings estimates for the next year against 17 times for the overall S&P 500.

For the second quarter, for which results are starting to be reported in earnest this week, healthcare corporate earnings are expected to rise by 5.1 percent, besting a decline of 4.3 percent overall for S&P 500 companies, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Actively managed equity funds have pared back their healthcare holdings since the end of 2015, to 11.24 percent on average from 11.67 percent, according to Lipper data.

"There has been a tremendous trade out of healthcare," Savita Subramanian, head of U.S. Equity & Quantitative Strategy at BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research, said in a media briefing last week. "It’s no longer the loved, hottest sector, valuations are discounting a reasonable amount of risk, and we think that there is a buying opportunity here."