By Jamie Robertson BBC World business presenter

Pfizer is seeing several key drugs drop out of patent

Twelve months of euphoria - and then near panic, as the BBC's Global 30 has come to rest a mere 23 points higher than where it was last June.

The bull market took it all the way up to almost 5,900, before slipping away down to a low this year of 5,230.

Remember: the index started almost two years ago at 5000.

"The mood this year," said David Jones, chief market analyst at CMC Markets, "is much more cautious. At the end of last year, it was clear cut, the US was going sideways and Europe and Asia were going up.

"Now it's all much more uncertain."

Lacking optimism

Now the index has been reshuffled and there are six stocks leaving, six ones arriving.

BBC Global 30, last 12 months

Before we look at who they are, a quick resume of the last 12 months: the most obvious conclusion is that Asia dominates the top of the tables, and the US the bottom, while Europe rests somewhere in the middle.

Even though the Dow shows a modest 6% gain on this period, the US Global 30 stocks show a similar - but negative - percentage movement

It seems that investors in big bellwether stocks simply do not share the optimism of the main market.

No such division of opinion in Asia.

Every indicator points upwards: the Nikkei is up 30%, the Hang Seng up 11%, the South Korean Kospi up 26% and the Asian Global 30 stocks are up 29%.

Europe is playing the part of Mr Average, with the three main markets up just over 2% and the Global 30 European stocks up a modest 1.4%

Drug on the market

The currency fluctuations are to some extent to blame for the US demise - the Global 30 is based in sterling - but the dollar has lost no more than a couple of percentage points against the pound over that period despite some wild fluctuations.

GOING UP... Top risers for June in the Global 30: Mizuho Financial Group: +62.2% BHP Billiton Ltd: +40.9% CNOOC (Red Chip): +39.7% Toyota Motor: +38.7% Procter & Gamble: +31.8%

The losers were dominated by Pfizer, whose shares fell 21% over the last year. It is now being dropped from the index.

It may still style itself as the biggest drugs business in the world, but the generic competition is gnawing away at its market.

This year, it loses patents on three drugs worth $9bn in annual sales, including the Zoloft anti-depressant.

Ironically the company that is replacing it in the Global 30 Is Johnson & Johnson: the company that this week agreed to pay $16.6bn for Pfizer's over-the-counter drugs business.

J&J's business is perhaps the most diversified healthcare business in the world, with interests in everything from baby oil and oncology drugs to stair-climbing wheelchairs.

Pfizer, meanwhile will be sticking more to what it knows - using the funds to find replacements for those lost patents.

Tech troubles

Next worst performer is Vodafone, down 20%. It stays in the index, but only by virtue of still being the world's top mobile phone operator.

GOING DOWN... Top risers for June in the Global 30: Pfizer: -20.9% Vodafone Group: -20.8% Microsoft Corp: -17.1% Du Pont De Nemours: -13.7% NTT Docomo: -10.5%

But it is facing stiff competition and slowing sales in the mature markets.

At the moment, it is pinning its hopes firstly on new whizz-bang innovations to create "churn" in existing mature markets; and secondly on new developing markets such as China and India.

In fact, one of the new entrants on the Global 30 is China Mobile, which with China Unicom dominates the 412 million strong mobile market in China. Licences to introduce high speed services, or 3G, are to be issued in September.

Another US stock Microsoft (down 17%) was in third bottom position.

Again it stays in the Global 30, but by virtue of the fact that no one - yet - is bigger in its sector.

Bill Gates's plans to step down have alarmed few investors, but many do fret about where the company will be earning its billions in years to come.

Will it be the internet - if so, what about Google? Or from game machines - in which case, its chances against Sony's PlayStation form the core concern. Or alternatively from new PC software - but that raises awkward questions about the many delays to its Windows Vista operating system upgrade.

All in all, too many question marks hang over the company for investors to push the shares upwards.

Bank boom

At the other end of the Global 30 scale, though, the numbers are still hugely impressive despite the recent sell-offs.

The best evidence of this is that the 62% gain shown by Mizuho Financial is not enough to keep it in the index. It has been pushed out by the new leviathan of Japanese banking, Mitsubishi UFJ, created by the combination of two banks.

IN & OUT Joining the Global 30: AT&T, Anglo American, China Mobile, Electricite de France, Johnson & Johnson, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Leaving the Global 30:BASF, E.On, Mizuho Financial Group, Pfizer, Verizon

Admittedly, the merger was forced upon the two to push the pace of clearing up bad debt.

But those debts are rapidly fading into memory, as the banks start pushing up their interest rates, consumer borrowing picks up and the Central Bank looks certain to raise rates soon in response to the Japanese economic revival.

China calls

Surprisingly, the oil companies have not been the stars of the Global 30.

Exxon is actually down 5% on the year and BP is down 3%.

"The oil price really peaked in the middle of last year," says David Jones.

"There has been a lot of volatility since then, but basically the price hasn't gone much higher, so the big oil stocks have not benefited. The small ones on the whole have been doing better."

Oil may not have done much - but commodities never stopped going up.

Miner BHP Billiton has gained 41%, cashing in on the rise in all commodity prices, from gold through to copper and zinc - though of course it also has oil interests as well.

Not surprisingly, one of the newcomers in the index is fellow mining group Anglo American, which has gained 5% since entering the index in the middle of the month.

But the Chinese oil group CNOOC rose 40%, reflecting the increasing interest investors have in China's international ambitions.

CNOOC has invested some $2.7bn over the last year in foreign projects including oil fields in Nigeria and gas fields in Australia.

In the last week it has announced that it and its partner Husky Energy may have found a natural field off China's coast - large enough to supply China for some 4 years.