After slumping in August, the Redux Global ICT-100 Index (‘R-100’) recovered during the trading month of September to finish at its highest-ever level.The R-100 rose by 2.7% in the month to 30 September, 2005 – reaching 1050.60, up from 1023.47 on 26 August and bettering the previous all-time high of 1039.59 on 29 July, 2005. September’s month-on-month gain is the fourth largest in the R-100’s 15-month existence.

The Asia-Pacific region led the way in September. The Japanese component of the R-100 gained 7.2% on the month, led by NTT and DoCoMo but supported by NEC. In Asia as a whole, a 5.6% gain was posted, thanks in large part to China Mobile and the Korean duo, SK Telecom and Samsung.

Europe and America both saw roughly similar patterns of performance, led by manufacturers, IT and Internet stocks while telcos remained flat, if not slightly down. North America nonetheless posted a 1.3% gain; in Europe, the rise was 3.16%.

In Europe, the largest rises were posted by Alcatel, Ericsson, Philips, Nokia and Siemens, backed up by technology houses such as SAP and Cap Gemini. Most major telcos slipped back a tad, in contrast.

In North America, HP, Cisco and Sun led the pack, ably assisted by telco equipment manufacturers Lucent, Motorola, Nortel and Qualcomm. Internet plays Amazon, Ebay and Google weighed in heavily, allowing the American component of the R-100 to offset falls at two of its heavyweights, Microsoft and Oracle.

Compared to across-the board indexes, the Redux Global ICT-100 Index is now 11% above its 2005 low; the Dow, by contrast, is 5.5% above its low, although the NASDAQ (13% up) the FTSE (14.5% up) and the Nikkei (25% up) are outperformers. Those figures are broadly in line with the way, viewed regionally, that the R-100 has behaved this year. On the flipside, while the R-100 rides at its highest level so far this year, both the Nikkei and the FTSE are some 0.5% down on their 2005 peaks and the US indicators are both more than 3% down.

The R-100 is also now 10.2% up on 52 weeks ago, representing as of 30 September a total market cap across 100 companies of more than US$3.56 trillion. A couple more months of steady growth and this might become scary.
Jim Chalmers