opportunities

Wall Street rout rewards some out-of-favor shares
Wed May 17, 2006 6:00pm

By Jennifer Coogan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A broad-based rout in U.S. equities on Wednesday gave some recently neglected shares a chance to shine, chief among them the battered and bruised health provider sector.

Of the 35 shares on the Standard & Poor's 500 that weren't in negative territory, 11 were managed care or health care services shares, with Tenet Healthcare Corp. racking up the biggest percentage gain, up 8.4 percent to $8.03.

Tenet on Wednesday got a lift after it agreed to pay $21 million to resolve long-running criminal charges For details see, while the broader market was fretting about signs of inflation and the potential for an extended round of Federal Reserve interest rate increases.

Managed care provider WellPoint Inc. was up 0.6 percent to $73.30 and Humana Inc. rose 1.6 percent to

$47.79.

Health insurers have been punished this year after several companies, including Aetna Inc. and Cigna Corp. reported disappointing first-quarter earnings.

"People are taking money off anything that's been a winner, so a lot of banks are getting killed, but the HMOs have already been hammered, so people think there's so much downside," said Scott Vergin, portfolio manager at Thrivent Financial. "It's not like you can't take them out and shoot them again."

Technology stocks also held their ground despite languishing this month in last place out of the 10 S&P major industry groups.