Top Ten Retail Investor Buys & Sells for week ending 22 December 2006

Angus Rigby, Chief Executive Officer, TD Waterhouse, commented:

“Are retail investors becoming more sophisticated? It would certainly seem so: Our recent research exploring investor confidence trends showed that a majority of investors (57%) use internet sources to help them decide what shares to trade, followed closely by financial press/specialist magazines (41%). It seems that long gone are the days when investors relied solely on IFAs or brokers for their share picking advice.

“Now, the proliferation of online trading tools and real time information has enabled investors to make their own educated decisions and act on them quickly. Here at TD Waterhouse we have seen online trading numbers increase substantially in recent months and it is a very encouraging sign of things to come in the retail investor market.”

The JKX Factor

Investors have this week been keeping a keen eye on mining exploration and production company JKX Oil & Gas as the company sent out a drilling update on its programme in the Ukraine on Wednesday. The news that its I126 well is flowing at a stabilised rate of 1,850 barrels of oil was received well by the market and helped boost the share price this week also propelling the stock into the TD Waterhouse top ten buys for the first time.

JKX has interests in Eastern Europe, Southern Europe and the United States, but the bulk of its operations are in the Ukraine. The company outperformed the wider oil & gas sector in the first half of 2006 helping the share price reach 52 week highs of 440p back in April, as it announced doubled annual profits following a strong performance in 2005. Since then however, the share performance has been on a downward incline over the second half of the year and has fallen back to around the 280p mark, yet despite this share growth overall for the year is still roughly 15%.

Party time?

Is the worst over for PartyGaming? The erstwhile FTSE 100 Company has suffered a host of misfortune after the onslaught of the US online gambling bill, but there has been at least some good news for beleaguered shareholders of the online poker host: Revenues in the company have stabilised and key performance indicators seem to be pointing in the right direction. On top of this, PartyGaming has been linked with a number of acquisition targets in the New Year, including competitor 888 Holdings, and rumours are abroad of a marketing drive targetting the potentially lucrative YouTube audience.

The stock remains ever popular with TD Waterhouse clients helping it become one of the most actively-traded stocks for 2006. But the recent performance of the share will not bring Christmas cheer to many as it is still trading at around all-time lows of 26p. With almost equal numbers of buys and sells this week it is evident that some punters hoping for a quick profit are buying into the stock at what they consider to be a discounted level, whereas others are cutting their losses.

Top 10 Buys
1 BP
2 PartyGaming
3 BT Group
4 GlaxoSmithKline
5 BHP Billiton
6 Cairn Energy
7 Vedanta Resources
8 British Energy
9 HSBC Holdings
10 JKX Oil & Gas

Top 10 Sells
1 Royal Bank of Scotland
2 Vodafone
3 PartyGaming
4 BHP Billiton
5 BT Group
6 BP
7 Lloyds TSB
8 Tesco
9 HBOS
10 Barclays