Top Ten Retail Investor Buys & Sells for week ending 27 April 2007

Angus Rigby, Chief Executive Officer, TD Waterhouse, commented: Banking stocks dominated market talk once more this week as Royal Bank of Scotland upped the stakes in its bid for Dutch Bank ABN Amro. Monday saw Barclays agree to buy ABN in an all-share deal but the RBS-led consortium has since stepped in with a cash-and-shares proposal of $98 billion. During an update to its shareholders Barclays reported back positively on 2007’s figures, with pre-tax profit in the first quarter 15 percent ahead of the previous year. As the takeover battle continues, our investors remain divided on the stock with near equal numbers of buyers and sellers.

Continuing the theme of takeovers, interest was renewed in Sainsbury this week after the abandoned takeover bid from the CVC-led consortium. Investors are now mulling over the future of the supermarket after a Qatari-backed investment group paid £1.4 billion for a 14.4 per cent stake to become the group's biggest shareholder. The share price is up over 7 per cent on last week on the back of this news, nudging just below yearly highs of 568p per share hit earlier this month.

GlaxoSmithKline, Europe’s biggest drug maker was also in the spotlight this week after posting its quarterly results on Wednesday. The Company has enjoyed renewed investor interest following the Japanese approval for its asthma drug Advair and anti-thrombolic treatment Arixtra.

Elsewhere on the market investors have been busy buying Yell Group this week despite a drop in the share price. Trading activity was strong in the largest independent U.S. directory publisher following a profit warning over slipping revenue in its core US operations.

The Top Ten buys and sells are measured as the number of trades carried out in each stock over the previous 7 days.


Top 10 Buys
1 Partygaming
2 Barclays
3 Yell Group
4 Royal Bank of Scotland
5 Imperial Energy Co
6 Tanfield Group
7 Woolworths Group
8 BP
9 Northern Rock
10 Tesco

Top 10 Sells
1 Partygaming
2 Barclays
3 Imperial Energy Co
4 Vodafone
5 BP
6 Lloyds TSB
7 Tanfield Group
8 Glaxosmithkline
9 Sainsbury J
10 BT Group