Top Ten Retail Investor Buys & Sells for week ending 5 December 2007

Angus Rigby, Chief Executive Officer, TD Waterhouse, commented: A sigh of relief was given from investors and cash-strapped borrowers across the UK, after the Bank of England yesterday decided to cut interest rates from 5.75 per cent to 5.5 per cent. It is hoped that this quarter point cut will restore investor confidence which has been dented by turbulence on the global credit markets and set about loosening the credit knot stifling the nation’s economic growth.

Added into the mix with this announcement on Thursday was a trading statement from Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), reassuring its investors that results would be “well ahead of market consensus” forecasts. The Company also estimated that write-downs would be £950m, a figure below most analysts’ forecasts. Shares in RBS rallied by over 9 per cent on the previous week on the back of this news but TD Waterhouse customers were divided this week with near equal buys and sells in the stock.

Speciality pharmaceutical company Meldex is popular amongst our customers this week after submitting a treatment for oral pain to the UK medical authorities for approval. Shares in Meldex International have risen over the past month after the Company announced the launch of two over-the- counter products in Europe next year. Share price is up 34 per cent this week on last nudging nearer its annual high of 90.50p hit recently.

Our customers were bearish on the mining sector this week, with many choosing to take profits from the world's fourth-largest nickel mining company Antofagasta, Swiss-based miner Xstrata and India-based Vedanta Resources. In last week’s Q3 financial report, Antofagasta reported a 6.1 per cent fall in nine month earnings on weaker turnover and higher on-site and shipping costs. Meanwhile, share price in Xstrata is up by 44 per cent year on year, boosted this week by the announcement of a takeover bid for New South Wales based coal miner Resource Pacific and shares in Vedanta Resources hit a 52 week high of 2,344p yesterday.

TD Waterhouse Top Ten Retail Investor Buys & Sells for week ending 5 December 2007

Top 10 Buys
1 Barclays
2 Royal Bank of Scotland
3 Northern Rock
4 Lloyds TSB
5 Bradford & Bingley
6 Woolworths Group
7 British Airways
8 Meldex International
9 Debenhams
10 Tanfield Group

Top 10 Sells
1 Barclays
2 Royal Bank of Scotland
3 Northern Rock
4 Alliance & Leicester
5 Lloyds TSB
6 Bradford & Bingley
7 Partygaming
8 Xstrata
9 Antofagasta
10 Vedanta Resources

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