Top Ten Retail Investor Buys & Sells for week ending 26 October 2007

Angus Rigby, Chief Executive Officer, TD Waterhouse, commented: This week all eyes were on UK mortgage lender Bradford & Bingley who continued in its attempt to quell investors’ fears over funding. The Company has seen its value almost halve since the beginning of 2007, amidst rumours that if was following in the footsteps of ailing lender Northern Rock. Reassurances that it is well positioned for the second half of 2007 were muffled by a report issued by the Bank of England on Thursday. The Bank’s half-yearly Financial Stability Review discussed the vulnerability of Britain’s financial system to exogenous shocks and described the ongoing credit crisis as the “most severe challenge to the UK financial system for several decades.

The Company, which is the UK’s biggest buy-to-let lender, indicated last week that its mortgage loan growth could decelerate in the coming year. Concerns over the housing market have also contributed to a 38 per cent decrease in Bradford & Bingley’s share price since last year. The share price now sits precariously above its 52 week low of 254p hit earlier this month.

Data search software Company, Autonomy Corporation, also saw heavy trading activity this week, after reporting record Q3 figures last week. Annual like-for-like profit for the financial year was up 56.7 per cent, and profit for the first nine months of the year was up 63 per cent to $71.913m. During its third quarter, the Company added a myriad of blue-chip companies to its client list, including Boeing, News Corp, Shell and the International Monetary Fund. Share price is up 8.5p this week on last to 966p a share.

Meanwhile, TD Waterhouse customers took profits from mining giant Xstrata this week, as metal prices fell back from recent highs. The Company share price fell by just nearly 1 per cent this week, representing a fall of 26p per share to 3,407p. Overall the price of the stock is up 51.02 per cent on last year and long term investors will be hoping that the Xstrata’s $3.8bn nickel project in the North Province of New Caledonia will boost further growth for the Company.

TD Waterhouse Top Ten Retail Investor Buys & Sells for week ending 26 October 2007

Top 10 Buys
1 Bradford & Bingley
2 Northern Rock
3 Barclays
4 BP
5 Partygaming
6 Vodafone Group
7 Royal Bank of Scotland
8 Autonomy Corp
9 Woolworths Group
10 BHP Billiton PLC

Top 10 Sells
1 Barclays
2 Northern Rock
3 Royal Bank of Scotland
4 Bradford & Bingley
5 Partygaming
6 Autonomy Corp
7 Alliance & Leicester
8 BHP Billiton PLC
9 Lloyds TSB Group
10 Xstrata PLC

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