Top ten retail investor buys & sells for week ending 16 November 2007

Angus Rigby, Chief Executive Officer, TD Waterhouse, commented: Once again, the financial services sector dominated market news and investor activity this week with Northern Rock, RBS, Barclays, Lloyds TSB and Alliance & Leicester featuring in TD Waterhouse’s Top 10 Buys. All eyes were on Barclays which announced a £1.3bn write-down for its exposure to the US sub-prime mortgage market and October write-downs and charges of £800m, far less than the £5bn previously speculated. These figures brought relief to the bank after last Friday’s rumours brought its shares tumbling by 10 per cent. Upon Thursday’s announcement, Barclay’s share price opened high at 563p, over 9 per cent higher than the previous week. Chief Executive, John Varley, commented that these figures were "rigorous and reassuring" but investor confidence amongst our customers was divided on the stock this week.

Tuesday of this week saw Vodafone, the world’s biggest mobile group, report interim results that exceeded market expectations with share price rising to 195.7p per share. Vodafone’s chief executive, Arun Sarin, was keen to discuss Vodafone’s massive 45 per cent increase in revenue, citing the growing market for mobile data functions such as mobile web surfing as one of the key reasons for the Company’s strong performance. Despite Sarin's glowing figures TD Waterhouse customers chose to take profits from Vodafone this week. The Company reported a pre-tax profit of £4.6bn in the six months to 30 September 2007, compared with a loss of £3.3bn in the first half of 2006-07.

Meanwhile, investor interest was strong in the retail sector this week with high-street retailer Woolworths and UK supermarket Sainsbury popular amongst TD Waterhouse customers. This will be welcome news for these companies as a number of the UK’s leading high-street chains look to Christmas television advertising campaigns to boost business for the sector this month. The total advertising expenditure for the festive season is estimated to hit the half a billion pound mark. Woolworths have this week seen a share value rise of 2.82 per cent but shares in Sainsbury have fallen by 6.62 per cent.

TD Waterhouse Top ten retail investor buys & sells for week ending 16 November 2007

Top 10 Buys
1 Royal Bank of Scotland
2 Barclays
3 Lloyds TSB
4 Northern Rock
5 Sainsbury
6 BT Group
7 Alliance & Leicester
8 BHP Billiton
9 British Airways
10 Woolworths

Top 10 Sells
1 Royal Bank of Scotland
2 Rio Tinto
3 Northern Rock
4 Barclays
5 BG Group
6 Vodafone
7 Tesco
8 National Grid
9 BT Group
10 BP

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