Hart Capital Management Inc., a Spokane-based investment firm, says the stock value of 14 publicly traded Inland Northwest companies as measured in an overall index it prepares rose by nearly 4 percent in the third quarter.

The Hart Capital Index uses a methodology similar to that of the Standard & Poor 500 for publicly traded companies here. In comparison, the S&P 500 rose nearly 5 percent in the latest quarter.

Meanwhile, the number of companies here tracked by Hart Capital is shrinking. The investment firm's third-quarter index removed Coeur Mining Inc., which recently moved its headquarters to Chicago from Coeur d'Alene. Also, Spokane-based Sterling Financial Corp. is expected to drop off the report next year, when Portland-based Umpqua Holdings Corp. completes its earlier announced acquisition of Sterling.

Another company in the index, Sandpoint-based Coldwater Creek Inc., recently announced that its board of directors will evaluate a sale or merger among other options to enhance value for stockholders. The company has had annual losses and declining sales going back five years.

Hart Capital started issuing its reports in 2006.

In the current Inland Northwest index, Hart Capital says bank stocks significantly outperformed other stocks during the quarter, led by Sterling Financial, the parent company of Sterling Bank, up by 20.5 percent. Other banking companies at the top of the stock index were Intermountain Community Bancorp and Idaho Independent Bank, increasing 16 percent and 12 percent, respectively.

Coldwater Creek fell to the bottom of the index in the third quarter, down 31 percent. For the prior 12-month period, Hecla Mining Co. stock had the weakest performance, down 52 percent from a year earlier as a result of the mining industry being hard-hit by declining prices for precious metals, Hart Capital says.

Hart Capital also compiles what it calls the Inland Northwest Composite to track the aggregate market value of the same 14 publicly traded companies. Market value, or capitalization, is share price multiplied by the number of outstanding shares.

With Coeur Mining removed from the report, the investment company says the composite here is down by $2.77 billion, or 22.3 percent, from $12.4 billion a year ago. Without consideration of that mining company, the composite declined $178 million, or 1.8 percent from a year ago.

The other companies that Hart tracks include Ambassadors Group Inc., Avista Corp., Itron Inc., Clearwater Paper Corp., Key Tronic Corp., WTB Financial Corp., Northwest Bancorp., Potlatch Corp., and Red Lion Hotels Corp.