Top Ten Retail Investor Buys & Sells for week ending 20 July 2007

Angus Rigby, Chief Executive Officer, TD Waterhouse, commented: This week has culminated in mixed activity in the market. The FTSE 100 Index finally picked up on Thursday, rising for the first time in four days. Busy activity within the mining sector has led to increased interest from retail investors. One significant catalyst appears to be the weakness of the dollar which has, this week, hit a 26-year low against the British sterling.

One business that certainly isn’t celebrating is Rolls-Royce. This is reflected amongst TD Waterhouse customers who have heavily sold their shares in the company this week. As a British company working in an American dollar-denominated industry, Rolls Royce experiences what has been referred to as "significant dollar transaction exposure." Despite recent excitement over soaring shares, $15 billion in revenue from orders at last month's Paris air show and the launch of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner engine, its exposure to the weak dollar is cooling analyst enthusiasm. Company shares, this week, slipped to a monthly low of 537,00p, an unfortunate turn around after its steep ascent throughout the last quarter.

More positive news comes from the mining sector. Rio Tinto, this week, reported its June quarterly production with news that the Company is operating at maximum capacity to take advantage of the current high commodity prices. Despite reports that cost inflation in the Pilbara is continuing to squeeze margins, Rio Tinto has proved very popular with TD Waterhouse customers. This is also likely to be a reflection of last week’s news that the Company is set to take over Canadian aluminium business Alcan.

Rio Tinto has been described as a ‘white knight’, to rescue Alcan from a $28 billion hostile takeover bid from Alcoa. Alcoa itself is now rumoured to be facing a bid from Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP Billiton. Consequently BHP Billiton emerges as a popular buy option for our customers this week. However, turbulence in share value for the Company is set to continue amidst continuing market talk of falling metal prices.

Top 10 Buys
1 Royal Bank of Scotland
2 Carter & Carter
3 Lloyds TSB Group
4 Vodafone
5 GlaxoSmithKline
6 Tesco
7 Rio Tinto
8 Tanfield Group
9 Standard Life
10 BHP Billiton PLC


Top 10 Sells
1 Standard Life
2 Bradford & Bingley
3 Royal Bank of Scotland
4 Vodafone Group
5 Rolls Royce Group
6 Sainsbury’s J
7 Unilever PLC
8 BP
9 British Airways
10 Scottish & Southern Energy

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