Alongside those in China's telecoms operators, these shares have become international bellwethers for the Chinese market as a whole.
The "show-me" state is one of America's bellwethers, having voted for the victor in every presidential election since 1960.
The vendors' own rising share prices allowed them to pay employees with stock options rather than cash, creating payroll savings and further boosting profits.All this grossly inflated the sales and profits of the technology bellwethers.
The MP calls his brand of politics "white-van Conservatism"—a reference to the aspirational working-class voters who make towns like Harlow, north-east of London, such crucial bellwethers.
Voters in six states including a pair of traditional bellwethers, Ohio and Missouri will choose whether to raise theirs.
Along with Missouri, Ohio is reckoned to be the best of bellwethers, the most reliable predictor of the national result; and its Republicans are mostly pretty gloomy.One senior party man lowers his voice and confides: "I hate to say this, it's a terrible thing, but the only thing that might save us is people's reluctance to vote for Obama because of, you know, his colour".
THAT your speech patterns depend on who you're talking to is hardly news, but James Pennebaker and Molly Ireland at the University of Texas at Austin have shown that they can be bellwethers of the state of your relationship, and to a fascinating degree:Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung wrote to each other almost weekly over a seven-year period as their careers were developing.
So student elections are seen as bellwethers for public opinion.
But several others could have effects just as far-reaching if they create bellwethers or test grounds for future policy in other states or Congress.
In local elections in May it stormed ahead in the party's traditional strongholds like Rotherham in Yorkshire, where it won ten of the available 21 council seats—and in bellwethers like Thurrock, an Essex constituency that Labour badly needs to win from the Tories at next May's general election.
Many of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' 6,100 members are in the various professional guilds, making their awards bellwethers for Hollywood's biggest night.
