(August 30 – 12:30 ET) – BMO Nesbitt Burns has launched the Canadian High Tech 100 Index. Investors will be able to track the performance of their investments against an index that includes the shares of 100 Canadian technology companies of different sizes and listed on different exchanges.
“This is a new index for a new economy,” said Jeff Orr, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc. “Before the BMO Nesbitt Burns High Tech 100 Index, technology investors had only the TSE 300 sub-index, which is overwhelmed by one large stock, or NASDAQ, which does not consider Canadian RSP eligibility. This index is objective, transparent, and Canadian.”
The index will be available to investors and the financial media on the BMO Nesbitt Burns website.
The portfolio of stocks that comprise the BMO Nesbitt Burns High Tech 100 Index qualifies as Canadian overall, although some individual companies do not. To construct the index, BMO Nesbitt Burns created a list of “identifiably” Canadian high technology companies — those with a Canadian base or a substantial portion of their employees in Canada.
The top 100 companies, ranked by market capitalization, were selected for the index with the largest individual weighting being limited to eight per cent of the total. The companies in the index will be reviewed every six months and adjusted accordingly. Currently, 41 of the stocks are hardware companies, 44 are in software and 15 are in software services companies.
-IE Staff