INDONESIA - FINANCE - Indonesian market reflects a growing economy

www.emergingmoney.com - With GDP of $1.1 trillion, Indonesia is the 15th-largest economy in the world. This growth is tracked by the Jakarta Composite Index, the benchmark equity index for the Indonesian market.

The Indonesia Stock Exchange was created in 2007, when the Jakarta Stock Exchange merged with the Surabaya Stock Exchange. The Jakarta Composite Index tracks all listed companies on the exchange relative to a base value of 100 that was set on August 10, 1982. In addition to sector-based indices, the exchange has created the Jakarta Islamic Index of 30 stocks in compliance with Islamic law.  (source)

INDONESIA - BANKING - Islamic banks waiting for establishment Islamic benchmark

WWW.TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Islamic Bank will continue to wait for the certainty of Bank Indonesia (BI) associated with the establishment of Islamic benchmark. They claim will not necessarily adopt the benchmark index.

Director of Bank Muamalat Indonesia (BMI), Arviyan Arifin, welcomed the plan to launch a benchmark BI shariah bank. "For us it's a good plan," he told Tempo on Sunday, February 19, 2012. (source)

AUSTRALIA - INDEX - Australia to Get First Islamic Index

www.wsj.com - Thomson Reuters is on the brink of giving Australia its first Islamic index.

Starting in early February, Thomson Reuters and Australia’s Crescent Wealth are jointly launching Islamic Australia Index — a research-based index that will offer local and international investors a tool to help invest in accordance with Islamic investment principles in the local market.

The initiative comes ahead of an expected government proposal to change tax guidelines to help open up the local market for Islamic investment products, though there remains some concern about the market’s growth potential.(source)

WORLD - CAPITAL MARKETS - Sharia investing leans to West

Islamic benchmarks have consistently outperformed conventional ones

To some observers of Islamic equity investing, Islamic or Sharia-compliant equity indexes seem to imply investing in publicly-listed companies in Muslim countries.

The end results contradict the assumptions. This also rebuts allegations by many from the anti-Sharia movement that Islamic investing is about investing in companies linked to terrorism or financing terrorism. The largest companies in the S&P Global BMI Sharia include ExxonMobil, IBM, Chevron, Nestle and Microsoft.

Today, there is a large stock count and market capitalisation weighting bias towards the non-Muslim G20 countries in all global Islamic equity indexes. We will look at country exposure of Sharia-compliant companies, the economic sector exposure and selected Muslim country Islamic indexes, and how to increase number of Sharia-compliant companies. (source)

WORLD - OPINION - Report card of Islamic indices

Islamic equity indices, 1.0, became a global ‘instrument’ in 1999, with the launch of the Dow Jones Islamic Market Index (DJIM). But, what progress, if any, has been made in the last 11 years on Islamic indexing?

(Full disclosure: I was fortunate enough to lead a team for the DJIM.)
But, first, a step back to better understand the function and role of indices. (source)