This article from Yahoo Finance will inform you that the major indexes of the American stock market all closed at record highs last Friday.  During the same week the 3rd Quarter of the year closed and the Funeral Director Daily Death Care Index (DCI) reported a close that indicated a 3.60% increase for the year-to-date.

Below you will see a chart of the individual four stocks that make up the Funeral Director Daily DCI Index and how they have performed in comparison to the major indexes for the Year-to-Date (YTD) 2025 up to the end of the 3rd Quarter on September 30 2025.  You will notice that the DCI trails every sector with the possible exception of Consumer Staples for stock price appreciation for YTD 2025.  One possible reason for this, however, is the small sample size of public companies with at least a portion of their business in Death Care.

As you can see funeral home, cemetery, and crematory operators Carriage Services and Service Corporation International have had positive results, as far as stock price apprecition goes,  so far in 2025 while the other two members of the DCI, Matthews International and Security National Financial Corporation have seen their stock price drop during the year.  It’s difficult to know why, but both Matthews International and Security National Financial have other operations outside of Death Care which may be holding back their stock appreciation in what has been, as noticed by the stock index gains, a rather robust period for public stock investors.

Market Segments performance for YTD 2025 up to September 30.  Source:  LPL Research Factset

How About the Long-Term:  Just for the fun of it I went back to October 3, 2015, and looked at price appreciation (as recorded on Yahoo Finance) of the major indexes and also of the stocks that make up the Death Care Index.  If you had had $10,000 of either the index or a particular stock on October 3, 2015 and still held the index or stock, here’s what those indexes or stocks would be worth today (10/03/2025):

• Dow Jones Industrials Index:  $28,502
• Nasdaq Composite Index:  $50,780
• S&P 500 Index:  $34,992

And, here’s a chart of the Death Care Index values for the that hypothetical $10,000 investment as of October 3, 2015:

Related Information:

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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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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The end of trading on Monday marked the end of the first-half of the year for stocks.  And, it was a significant day as on Monday the Nasdaq and S&P 500 both recorded All-Time highs in their numbers.  However, as you may know, the road to the record in 2025 was not a straight climb without a little descent put into the numbers on the way to the records.

In 2025, stocks moved very high into February and then receded. . . and further receded after President Trump announced his “Liberation Day” of tariffs on foreign country products coming into the United States.  As that issue worked its way through the markets and other contemporary issues such as inflation, debt, interest rates, and the potential tax bill moved forward the markets took a turn for the better culminating with those record highs on Monday.

At the end of the day following that roller-coaster ride of six months the major indexes settled up for the period as such. . . S&P 500 up 5.10%, Nasdaq up 4.98%, and the Dow Jones Industrials up 3.36%.

Funeral Director Daily’s Death Care Index (DCI) which consists of the the American public companies bringing in a large share of their revenue from Death Care industry sales also rose for the half-year.  However, the DCI lagged the three major indexes with an absolute increase of 0.95% which, when rounded like the other indexes comes in a a 1.0% increase.

The DCI is comprised of four stocks — Matthews International, Service Corporation International, Carriage Services, and Security National Financial Corporation.  One share of each of those stocks was worth a combined total of $159.38 on January 1, 2025, and those same shares climbed to a value of $160.90 as of the close of business on June 30, 2025.

As you can see, Carriage Services was the half-year gains leader among DCI stocks with a 14.78% return.

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

Funeral Director Daily take:  It’s certainly been an interesting six months, not only watching the markets, but watching the world.  I’m guessing that a new president in the Oval Office and how he operates has something to do with the “ups and downs” of today’s market.

As for Death Care specifically, the lack of value movement to the upside or the downside does not surprise me.  I think that there is a lot of anxiety and caution about the direction of Death Care business.  Certainly, direct cremation, do-it-yourself memorial services, and other changes have investors wondering how those decisions will affect traditional funeral homes and cemeteries.  And, on the positive side, I think some investors are expecting technological advances to begin to show financial improvements in Death Care businesses.  I expect as these changes move out into reality and are quantified, public investment in Death Care will eventually move one way or another.

As for the overall market, I don’t remember a time when there seemed to be so many “balls in the air” on the front burner that have some financial or political ramifications to them that can affect the market.  We have inflation, interest rates, debt and deficits, tariffs, tax bills, world peace initiatives, and more that will affect how we do business moving forward  —  and the stock market will be a reflection of how that politics and business, including Death Care, moves forward.

Here’s some articles on the subjects for your 4th of July lakeside reading:

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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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Today is December 2 and we are into the last month of 2024.  If you are involved in investments — and virtually everybody in this day and age of 401k’s, IRA’s, 529 Plans, and the like is – you have to admit it’s been a pretty good year.  And finally, it has even been a good year for the Funeral Director Daily Death Care Index (DCI).

The Funeral Director Daily DCI was started a few years ago to measure the direction of the aggregate Death Care public stock price sentiment.  Very seldom over that time has its numbers kept up with the broader based indexes, but at least for the first 11 months of 2024 it is doing just that.  Up until 2024 it has appeared that the investing public was not as confident in Death Care companies as they were in the overall broad-based market businesses.

That seems to have changed for 2024 though as stock price appreciation in public Death Care companies kept up with the marked indexes in general.

To be sure, the DCI is not scientific, not price weighted, and offers a very small sample size of companies but does give a general direction of what has happened in the overall Death Care stock market picture.  Over the years, the sample size of the DCI has dwindled as a full 1/2 of the original companies have moved out of the public market for one reason or another.

The Funeral Director Daily DCI price is comprised of owning one share of stock in each of the following four public companies who has at least a part of their business touch the Death Care space:  Service Corporation International, Carriage Services, Security National Financial Corporation, and Matthews International.

As of the close of business on Friday, November 29, 2024, the composite DCI price stood at $172.38 as compared to the closing price to close out 2023 of $138.68.   That’s an increase of 24.3%

When you compare that price to the same numbers for the broader indexes of the stock market, here’s how it compares:

• Death Care Index:  +24.3%
• Dow Jones Industrials:  +18.24%
• NASDAQ:  +28.0%
• S&P 500:  +25.2%

And, here’s the fate of each individual company stock that make up the DCI on a Year-to-Date basis:

The Shrinking members of the DCI — When the DCI was founded by Funeral Director Daily it contained eight public stock members.  Four of those companies, or the Death Care portions of those public companies are no longer in the public realm.  Here’s what happened to each of those companies accompanied by an article on each situation:

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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The business news last week was centered on the Producer’s Price Index (PPI) rising 0.6% in the month February, which equates to an annual 7.2% inflationary rate.  That reading, after being lower and even negative for a couple of months prior,  has caused many pundits to opine that getting rid of inflation in America may be a “stickier problem than once thought”.

Here’s a definition of the PPI and why it may have an effect on the products that funeral homes sell:

“(The PPI) is a collection of indexes economists use to measure the average change over time in domestic producers’ prices for their products or services. This information provides a picture of the marketplace from the perspective of sellers.

So, from my point of view, it indicates what the cost of producing goods will be from the suppliers who sell to funeral homes. . . such as casket companies, vault companies, urn companies, paper goods companies, chemical companies, and so on.  Again, from my point of view, the reason it is so important to funeral homes is that it indicates, with all other things being equal, that in time your costs for those wholesale products will be going up and unless you can mark the retail price of those products up to at least match the increase in the wholesale price rise, you risk going backwards on profitability.

And, in a world where the consumer is very conscious of “costs” for what they are purchasing, that increased mark-up gets harder and harder to accomplish.  Combine that with the Death Care consumer’s thought process of potentially reaching a limit on what they will pay for an earth burial service and you can see the consumer having a greater propensity to choose a lower cash-margin alternative such as cremation with services or Direct Cremation as a result of these price increases.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  I’ve been involved in many businesses in my day, including owning and operating a funeral home for about 35 years.  In all of those businesses when you see input prices, such as products and labor, rising it makes for difficult decisions on how to move forward with your pricing.

There are options, especially if you are profitable at the time, to simply stand pat and absorb those costs without raising prices for the sake of retaining clientele. Or, you can raise prices to retain your margins. . .but you do that with the knowledge that the pricing may drive off some customers or,  in funeral service,  change them to a lesser cost and lower margin service.

That is the “between a rock and hard place”, as is the expression that many funeral homes find themselves in.  In today’s environment, holding on to customers and on to margins is especially critical if you are a business that has debt that has been in an adjustable rate loan environment.

Another factor that may weigh in an owner’s mind is “What is the consumer’s position”?  For instance, if they believe that their consumer is in a very good financial position — which many American retired people, who are a funeral home’s base customer have traditionally been in — the ability to raise prices is probably there.

However, the University of Michigan Consumer Confidence Survey also came out last week and that shows that consumers are slightly less confident about their situation than they were a month ago.  In contrast to a year ago, however, they are much more confident.

One thing I do know is that funeral director independent owners are very skillful and knowledgeable about their businesses.  They are on Main Street virtually everyday and, because of their interaction with local people, have a great feeling how their communities are doing.  When it comes to these types of decisions on pricing, I’m pretty certain that each funeral home owner has a great instinct on what to do.

I was like that.. . . .I took in all information, input, and data that I could, but then let my instincts take over.  And, I never did anything in a hasty manner. . . always making slow, thoughtful decisions.  That’s the best advice I can give to owner/operators on on these type of “between a rock and hard place” issues

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“A servant’s attitude guided by Christ leads to a significant life”