While it may not quite be time for ICT equity portfolio investors to plan their luxury retirement homes, the latest figures for the Redux Global ICT 100 Index are heartening. September saw a recovery of 2.6% to 953.46. Set against 929.04 at the end of August and 938.68 at the end of July, this marks the highest level since the R-100’s inception at the start of July, 2004.

The performance is all the more remarkable on account of the dismal showing by Japanese stocks, which registered eight decliners out of ten and led to an overall fall in the Far East component of the R-100 of just over 2.6% despite some strong showings elsewhere in the region – notably South Korea.

In contrast, Europe posted a collective gain of 4.7% and North America weighed in with just over 3%. The month saw just five noteworthy fallers among the 40 European stocks in the R-100; in North America, declines for heavyweights such as Cisco, Intel and Nortel were more than offset by gains for, among others, Accenture, Computer Associates and Oracle.

Telco focus
The fluctuating fortunes of telco stocks worldwide are having a major impact on the R-100. A tracking sub-Index of 15 European PTOs within the R-100 showed an overall gain of 3.8% last month which, after two months in reverse, produces a net gain of 3.14% in the last quarter. The equivalent figures for the five big North American telcos in the R-100 are gains of 2.9% and 8.2% respectively; in Asia, last month’s fall of 7.4% means the five major Asian PTOs in the R-100 have together fallen in value by more than 20.4% in just three months.

On the wireless front, a separate sub-Index of the ten R-100 mobile-centric operators saw a gain of 1.1% last month, contributing to a rise of 2.9% in the last quarter.

Further information on these two new sub-Indexes and added analysis of the latest R-100 results will be available shortly via links posted here and from the R-100 Index menu item on the homepage. For the latest report and statistics on the 'PTO Tracker' click here; for background, click here.
Jim Chalmers