Top Ten Retail Investor Buys & Sells for week ending 28 September 2007

Angus Rigby, Chief Executive Officer, TD Waterhouse, commented: For the second week in a row, Northern Rock has come out on top of both our buys and sells lists, as the fate of the Newcastle-based mortgage lender took a further twist this week. On Tuesday, the bank revealed that it was engaged in preliminary talks with a number of other parties to discuss the possibility of a takeover deal, though it stressed that there was no guarantee an offer for the business would be forthcoming.

The Company also confirmed that it would be suspending the interim dividend payments that were due to be paid out to its shareholders in October. The news sparked an initial surge in retail investor interest that boosted Northern Rock’s share price, though by the end of the week its stock was trading at 10.30p below last week’s levels.

Elsewhere, our clients took the opportunity to increase exposure in British Airways, with the airline reaching number seven on the top buys list. Yesterday, the Company announced that it had placed its largest aircraft order in nine years, with thirty six planes, worth £4.1bn in total, set to join the airline’s long haul fleet by 2014. Shares in the Company were up 14p over the course of the last week.

On our sells list, BP polled at number four this week, as investors decided to take profits with the oil producing giant. Share value in the Company fell sharply on Tuesday after its chief executive told staff that the structure of the organization needed to be streamlined in order to increase efficiency.

TD Waterhouse Top Ten Retail Investor Buys & Sells for week ending 28 September 2007

Top 10 Buys
1 Northern Rock
2 Royal Bank of Scotland
3 Barclays
4 Alliance & Leicester
5 Bradford & Bingley
6 BHP Billiton
7 British Airways
8 Partygaming
9 Tanfield Group
10 Woolworths Group

Top 10 Sells
1 Northern Rock
2 Partygaming
3 Vodafone Group
4 BP
5 Barclays
6 Tanfield Group
7 BHP Billiton
8 Royal Bank of Scotland
9 Tesco
10 Alliance & Leicester

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