Financial Services Sector: Overview, Examples, & Investing Tips
Where the money is.
© Digital Vision—Photodisc/Getty Images
Think of the stock market’s financial services sector as a massive skyscraper in which all monetary transactions take place. It originates with the simplest purchases, like the morning coffee you buy on your way to work, all the way up to billion-dollar deals made by corporate giants. Cumulatively, these transactions amount to trillions of dollars changing hands daily in the U.S. economy.
When you invest in the financial services sector, or financials for short, you take a stake in the soaring tower that undergirds economic activity.
Financial services is one of the largest among the 11 Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) sectors in the stock market. With a market…