There is no doubt that while many investors (and President Trump) have waited for the Federal Reserve to set lower interest rates going forward and negotiated tariff rates lots of other investors have simply stayed invested and have found gains in the stocks of the S&P 500, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and Nasdaq.  Those indexes have returned gains of 10.4%, 7.1%, and 12.6% respectively year-to-date (up to September 5) in 2025.

And, of course, if you had invested in the Morningstar Global Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Index, that you can read about here, your investment would have grown 26.4% year-to-date up to September 5.

However, if you had put your money into the four stocks that comprise the Funeral Director Daily Death Care Index (DCI) from January 2 to September 5, 2025, you would be sitting on a negative return of just less than 1% for the same time period.  The unscientific Death Care Index is comprised of owning one share of stock of each of four public companies that have at least a portion of their revenues coming from Death Care.

Those stocks are Service Corporation International, Carriage Services, Matthews International, and Security National Financial Corporation (SNFC).  The DCI had a cumulative value on January 2, 2025 of $155.13 and on September 5, 2025, virtually two-thirds through the calendar year, the DCI rests at a cumulative value of $153.88  —  for a decrease in value of just under 1%.

Here’s a graphic of the information contained above:

Carriage Services bucks the trend — Carriage Services stock value increased in the time period from $39.02 per share to $42.74 per share, an increase of 9.53%.  As you can see from the chart above they were the only DCI stock to have a measurable gain for 2025’s first eight months.

This article from Yahoo Finance reports keys that management mentioned in their 2nd Quarter 2025 remarks that led to that increase.  Included among those key factors were:

• Funeral Segment volume growth
• Strong Preneed sales momentum
• Overhead Cost reductions
• Portfolio repositioning — The divestiture of non-core assets (presumably funeral home and cemetery facilities) coupled with the acquisitions of “higher growth, high-margin properties” (presumably funeral home and cemetery facilities).

Disclaimer-– The author of this article for Funeral Director Daily is a shareholder of Service Corporation International, Carriage Services, and Security National Financial Corporation.

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Funeral Director Daily’s analysis of the Death Care Index (DCI) for the 1st Quarter of 2025 shows that the four public companies that comprise the index held up favorably as a whole when compared against the larger followed indexes such as the Nasdaq, the S&P 500, and the Dow Jones Industrial averages.

Editors Note:  This article was ready to go before the markets dropped in value last Thursday and Friday.  I continued to keep it in the que for being published regardless because to me it represented a point in time and how Death Care compared to the rest of the investment world for the period of January 1, 2025 until March 31, 2025, a time period which did not include last Thursday and Friday.

For the quarter the DCI was down in stock price, compared to the first day of the year by about 3.9%.  That number, negative as it was, still beat both the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 and trailed only the composite average of the Dow Jones.  Here’s how those larger indexes fared for the quarter:

• Nasdaq:    -10.3%
• S&P 500:  -4.7%
• Dow Jones Industrials: -0.9%

Here’s a table of how the four companies that comprise the FDD Death Care Index fared:

As you can see, investors in three of the four DCI companies valued the companies at virtually the same valuations as they were valued at the beginning of the year.  The one exception to that fact was that the value of Matthews International dropped almost 20% for the quarter.

To be fair, only about 45-48% of Matthews International’s revenue comes from Death Care.  They are the parent company of Matthews Aurora Caskets and Matthews Cremation as well as offer products in the cemetery memorialization business.

In all fairness to the Death Care market and Matthews International, it was probably not the memorialization segment of the company that lead to the stock drop.  As this article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette relates, during the first quarter of 2025 Matthews had both a challenge to its board membership and announced the sale of one of the other non-Death Care companies in its business portfolio.

Matthews Board Chairman Alvaro Garcia-Tunon made this comment in the Post-Gazette article, “We appreciate the constructive dialogue that we’ve had with our shareholders and want to thank them for their feedback and support. That said, we know we have more work ahead to improve performance and deliver the results our shareholders expect from us.”

That same article made note of this situation and wrote of Garcia-Tunon, “He called the results of the vote a “validation of Matthews’ strategy, our board and the leadership of our CEO Joe Bartolacci, as well as the governance actions we have taken in recent years in response to shareholder feedback.”

The Big “Melt-Down” –  As alluded to in the Editor’s note above, the public stock markets had a “melt-down” on Thursday and Friday, more than likely due to the tariffs imposed by President Trump.  The result of that situation, so far, has had the major broad-based market indexes drop by about 10-12% over the two days.

For your information, I put together this small chart of the DCI companies performance in the few days between the end of the 1st Quarter and Friday — a 4-day period.  In comparison to the major indexes, the Death Care Index is down only 6%.  In “relative” terms, that’s again favorable to the broader indexes.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  There’s bound to be some anxiety in the greater markets, not only in the United States but in markets around the world, as President Trump sets his sails on his vision for America’s economy.  I think the the relative stability of the Death Care companies stock prices both for the quarter and during the “Melt-down” indicates that investors don’t believe that the business fortunes of these companies, especially those that deal in services rather than products, will be much affected by President Trump’s greater economic vision.

Disclaimer— The author of this article for Funeral Director Daily holds stock positions in Service Corporation International, Carriage Services, and Security National Financial Corporation.

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There has been a lot written about the stock markets in the two weeks of the Presidency of Donald Trump.  So much seems to depend on what the item of the day with President Trump is and that item seems to move markets one way or another.

I’m an amateur investor and I pay attention to what is happening in the markets. I’m also a long-term investor and pick companies to invest in that I have researched and believe that their stock value (company value) will be worth more ten years from today than the company is worth today.

I’ve said before in this column that I’ve bought and held stocks for a long-term and have been rewarded for my patience in companies gaining  value over that time.  I have a certain group of stocks that I hold as my “Long-Term” or “Forever” stocks because I believe that the companies will gain value over time.

One such company is Service Corporation International. Regardless of what you think of SCI, the company has rewarded long-term shareholders with stock appreciation that has averaged 21.71% growth (not including dividends) over the past ten years according to Seeking Alpha data.

And, when I look at some of my other forever stock hold cornerstone companies such as Berkshire Hathaway, McDonalds, and Mastercard, I am reminded that, in relation to those companies, my investment in SCI has been every bit as rewarding as most of them.

However, when I checked on Wednesday, another stock I hold in the Death Care business and a part of the Death Care Index (DCI), Security National Financial Corporation (SNFCA), has provided an even better return over the past ten years than SCI.  I find that extremely interesting because SNFCA is no where near as well-known as SCI.  It is a company that seems to have a lot less public profile in the industry/profession than SCI, but seems to get the results just the same.

As you can see from the chart below, SNFCA has returned, according to Seeking Alpha, an annual return of 25.02% to its shareholders for the 10-year period ended February 4, 2025.

Ten-Year and Annual Average Stock appreciation growth of the DCI.  Exclusive of any dividends that may be paid.

Interestingly, Security National Financial is entering its 60th year of business in 2025.  Their website, which you can access here, tells that story.

The Security National Financial Corporation business model rests on three distinct legs — Security National Life Insurance Company which serves the Death Care profession through preneed and its C&J Financial unit which deals in assignment funding,  Memorial Mortuaries and Cemeteries which serves the consumer public with Death Care services, and Security National Mortgage Company which is a full-service lender offering in-house underwriting.

The company, which started out in a rented home in 1965, continues to be based in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Disclaimer — The author of this article for Funeral Director Daily is a shareholder of Service Corporation International, Security National Financial Corporation, and Carriage Services.

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Just the other day as I was looking at public companies in the Death Care realm I noticed that Matthews International was paying a dividend to stockholders of just over 4% annually.  I look at those type of things because when I make an investment I not only like the stock price to eventually go up. . . . but, in the meantime if the company pays their stockholders a dividend it’s almost like having a Certificate of Deposit (CD) to go along with the equity investment. . . .and, if the company routinely increases dividends, it’s like getting a “step-up” CD on your initial equity investment whenever that dividend increase happens.

Of course, dividends and equity investments are not guaranteed by the FDIC like Certificate of Deposits, up to $250,000, are.  However, a look at past performance can give one some assurances that dividends will continue to be paid.  Those companies who not only pay dividends, but have increased them each year for at least 25 consecutive years are known as “Dividend Aristocrat” companies.

I was somewhat surprised that Matthews International, parent company of Aurora Caskets and Matthews Cremation, had paid a dividend to their shareholders and increased that dividend for the past 29 years making them a “Dividend Aristocrat”.  That is a sign of strength and longevity that one might not think of when looking at the performance of Matthews International and its stock price over the past couple of years.

Here is a list of current “Dividend Aristocrats”.

This year-old article from Smart Business titled “How Matthews International Corporation continues to evolve and expand after 170 years“ give some perspective.  The article makes the point that Matthews has kept this streak going even while “Matthews has  completed nearly 100 acquisitions across its business segments, acquiring the technical capabilities and critical skillsets that have fueled its growth” (since going public in 1994).

Skillsets and technology require research and development to bring products to market and that can cost investment dollars.  As a matter of fact, one might wonder whether Matthews International can keep up the increasing dividend trajectory of their company.

For the first three quarters of the company’s 2024 Fiscal Year (which will end at the end of September) sales have dropped slightly as has EBIDTA creating a squeeze on the companies earnings as they transition into some new products. . . .with that situation it will be interesting to watch Matthews International and see if they can keep their 29-year annual dividend increase streak going.

Related Information:  Seeking Alpha’s Latest Dividend Grades on Matthews International are as follows:

• Safety :   B-
• Growth:   C-
• Yield:   A
• Consistency:  A+

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