The MCNews 12 Index of Professional Services

The MCNews 12 Index reflects general investor sentiment about the state of the global professional services industry. The twelve publicly-traded companies included in the MCNews 12 Index account for roughly $80 billion in combined annual revenue, and serve clients around the world.

	MCNews 12 Index	Change	S+P 500 Change
June 2008	1010	-.24%	-6.74%
May 2008	1013	2.25%	-1.56%
April 2008	991	11.51%	5.13%
March 2008	888	- 4.87%	-1.74%
February 2008	934	4.48%	1.08%
January 2008	894	-11.6%	-9.8%

MCNews Index June 2008

Feast and Famine

The bad news for the US economy continued to pile up in June. Oil prices surged past $140 per barrel and consumer confidence, which sank to a sixteen-year low in May, fell even further in June.

The US Federal Reserve held its key interest rate at 2 percent, but noted that "in light of the continued increases in the prices of energy and some other commodities and the elevated state of some indicators of inflation expectations, uncertainty about the inflation outlook remains high." Translation: The Fed governors are spooked.

The broader market indexes reflected the bleak economic news. The S+P 500 Index has fallen more than 4 percent this year. And, the Dow Jones Industrial average has dropped roughly 20 percent from its all-time high, causing some analysts to call this a bear market for Dow stocks.

The MCNews 12 Index shook off this spate of bad news and is holding onto a 13 percent return for the year. Shares of Accenture jumped after the outsourcing and consulting firm said its fiscal third-quarter profit jumped 36 percent and that fourth-quarter sales would exceed analysts’ expectations.

Other firms in the MCNews12 Index are turning in strong performances, including CSC, IBM, Satyam, and Watson Wyatt.

Meanwhile, the news keeps getting worse for BearingPoint. In June, the NYSE halted trading on BearingPoint stock when its share price fell below $1.05, a threshold that triggers a suspension of trading.

The company also disclosed that its chief financial officer resigned after less than a month on the job. BearingPoint stock is down more than 90 percent in the last twelve months and has not had a profitable quarter in three years.

Is BearingPoint an acquisition target? It’s not hard to imagine, but only time will tell.

What firms are included in the MCNews 12 Index?

Accenture Ltd.
BearingPoint Inc
Computer Sciences Corp.
Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS)
Fiserv Inc.
Hewitt Associates Inc.
IBM Global Services
Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Satyam Computer Services Ltd
The Hackett Group (Combined with AnswerThink)
Watson Wyatt Worldwide Inc.
Wipro Ltd.

How is the MCNews 12 Index calculated?

Beginning in January 2007 with a base index of 1,000, we measure changes in each company’s monthly stock price and calculate an index value for each company. We then calculate the composite index value using an average of the index values of all the companies in the MCNews 12.