Houston, Texas, August 1, 2008 - After several months of modest to significant fluctuations, the traditional investment grade U.S. capital markets hardly budged in July. A small loss among equities just barely overcame gains among short term bond and cash securities and in the long term U.S. bond markets. The traditional investment grade U.S. capital markets ended July down only 0.12% to $31.99 trillion.

The second down month for equities saw a decrease of just $154 billion, a loss of 1.03% for July. This is the smallest percentage change in the more volatile equity markets since the 0.43% loss in June 2006. Though most sectors were down, the largest loss by both dollar value and percentage was in the Mining and Construction sector, down more than 13% with a decrease greater than $280 billion. All of the other sectors were down except for the Consumer Goods sector and the Finance, Insurance & Real Estate sector. Both saw increases of over $100 billion for gains of nearly 5% and 4.5% respectively. Equity securities start August valued at $14.8 trillion, a 46.13% share of the traditional investment grade U.S. capital markets.

Liquidity securities, made up of short term bonds and money market instruments, had a different story with an increase of $75 billion amounting to a 1.04% change. The markets for government issued securities all grew in July with the market for Treasury bills leading the way on a 7% increase. The markets for both short term Treasury bonds and short term federal agency bonds saw increases of greater than 2%. These gains more than offset the decreases in the markets for certificates of deposit, commercial paper, and short term investment grade corporate bonds. Liquidity securities now account for 22.78% of the traditional investment grade U.S. capital markets with a total value of $7.3 trillion.

As with the liquidity securities, the gains in the long term investment grade bond markets were primarily in the markets for government issued securities. The markets for long term Treasury bonds and long term federal agency bonds were both up with modest gains of 1.3% and 1.2% respectively. The market for traditional investment grade long term mortgage-backed securities was also up, gaining half a percent, while long term investment grade corporate bonds were down 0.9%. The bond markets increased $40 billion, or 0.4%, to $9.95 trillion which gave it a 31.09% share of the traditional investment grade U.S. capital markets. A year ago the $32 trillion traditional investment grade U.S. capital markets had equity, liquidity, and bond market proportions of 54.15%, 17.58%, and 28.26% respectively.

Dorchester's flagship index, CPMKTS^sm The Capital Markets Index, is carried on The American Stock Exchange under the symbol CPMKTS, with updates every 15 seconds. The Amex also publishes the component indexes: CPMKTSE^sm The Capital Markets Equity Index, CPMKTSB^sm The Capital Markets Bond Index and CPMKTSL^sm The Capital Markets Liquidity Index.

About Dorchester Capital Management LLC.
Dorchester Capital Management LLC is a Houston-based company principally focused on designing financial products for the professional investment community. Dorchester’s unique approach to processing, organizing and standardizing capital markets data from the broadest variety of sources gives it a superior ability to help clients with the fundamental risk analysis questions of asset allocation and benchmarking. For additional information, please visit the company's Web site at www.cpmkts.com.

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