Hospital stocks care more about earnings than Trumpcare

Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesDonald Trump.The passage of the American Health Care Act was met with a shrug by investors in hospital companies. Turns out they have more important things to worry about. Namely, earnings.

A Bloomberg index of American hospital companies slipped less than 2% intraday before erasing that decline within 15 minutes. It then moved as much as 1% higher before paring back to little changed.

Those moves pale in comparison to Tuesday's price action, which saw the index surged as much as 10%, its biggest gain since June 2015. The strength followed blockbuster earnings reports from Tenet and Community Health, which both soared more than 20% on the day.

If you're looking for the next bout of price swings in the hospital index, look no further than Quorum Health's earnings report on May 15. It's the only company in the index yet to report this quarter, and it's implied one-day earnings move is 10%.

NOW WATCH: The Marine Corps is testing a machine gun-wielding robot controlled with just a tablet and a joystick

Please enable Javascript to watch this video