Top Ten Retail Investor Buys & Sells for week ending 12 January 2007

Angus Rigby, Chief Executive Officer, TD Waterhouse, commented: After starting 2007 on an all time high, the FTSE took a knock on Thursday as the Bank of England unexpectedly increased interest rates from 5 to 5.25 per cent. The benchmark FTSE 100 traded 38 points higher prior to the Bank’s announcement before falling back to 6,130.

On a positive note, the Food and Drug retail sector traded up reaching a 12 month high of 4,748p on Wednesday. This was buoyed by a better than anticipated performance by W Morrison. In its trading statement on Wednesday, W Morrison announced that for the six weeks to 7 January 2007 like for like sales increased by 6.3% excluding fuel and by 6.0% including fuel. The supermarket said that waste and markdowns in the week following Christmas were 20% better than in 2006. Other supermarkets in this week’s top 10 are Tesco and Marks & Spencer. Tesco shares reached a year high of 422.50p on Thursday while Marks & Spencer reported a slow down in sales growth in the third quarter, especially in the lead up to Christmas. Like for like General Merchandise sales grew 7.1% in the 13 weeks to 30 December compared with 7.9% in the previous quarter. Goldman Sachs removed M&S from its 'Conviction Buy List' setting a “neutral” stance on the shares, citing valuation grounds.

Elsewhere, Vodafone PLC added 2.23% to its shares this week when the company confirmed that it was preparing for a bid for Indian mobile phone group Hutchison Essar. With almost complete market saturation in the UK, the Indian mobile phone market offers huge growth potential. Recognising this, our customers have been actively trading Vodafone shares.

Banking sector shares were popular sells this week as analysts at KBW voiced concern over Lloyds TSB, predicting that the shares would under perform on the target of 500p. Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays also featured in this week’s top 10 sells as their share prices rose slightly on Thursday.

The mining sector recovered after a poor start to 2007 following concerns over a market glut of copper. The sector rose 3.10% this week as metal prices improved. All the major players were firmly in the blue on Thursday; BHP Billiton up 4.91%, Vedanta Resources up 2.75%, Xstrata up 3.94% and Antofagasta up 2.16%. Our clients appear to have followed the upward market trend with all these mining stocks featuring in our top 10 buys.

Top 10 Buys
1 BP
2 BHP Billiton PLC
3 Partygaming
4 Vodafone group
5 Marks & Spencer GP
6 Xstrata
7 BG Group
8 Antofagasta
9 Royal Dutch Shell
10 Vedanta Resources

Top 10 Sells
1 Royal Bank of Scotland
2 Vodafone Group
3 Partygaming
4 Lloyds TSB Group
5 BP
6 BT Group
7 Morrison (W) Supermarket
8 Glaxosmithkline
9 Tesco
10 Barclays