Top Ten Retail Investor Buys & Sells for week ending 18 January 2008

Angus Rigby, Chief Executive Officer, TD Waterhouse, commented: This week has been dominated by news over the US economic slowdown and fears of a possible recession later this year. While these reports hammered confidence on the global markets, investor activity remained strong this week.

TD Waterhouse customers turned their attention to UK high street retailer Woolworths Group, increasing their exposure to the stock after an optimistic yet cautious trading statement from the Company on Wednesday. Woolworths reported an 11.2 per cent increase in total sales for the 49 weeks to 12 January and predicted that full year profit would be better than last year. However, like-for-like sales for the 49 weeks were down 3.2 per cent due to disappointing sales of electronic goods, such as flat screen TVs and PCs. Long term investors in Woolworths will be hoping that the company strategy for the forthcoming months will restore weakened consumer confidence in 2008.

In the financial services sector, Standard Life has seen strong trading activity this week with many of our customers taking profits from the Company. The UK insurer’s share price reached an annual low this week of 219.25p, pulling value down 20 per cent year on year. Standard Life suffered a general slide over the last six months alongside other competitors in the sector, including Friends Provident. In November, both life insurers unsuccessfully sought a merger with the closed end life insurer Resolution, which eventually settled with a takeover offer from Hugh Osmond’s private firm Pearl Assurance.

Meanwhile, Northern Rock’s general meeting in Newcastle on Tuesday renewed investor interest in the bank and left our customers divided over the stock throughout the week. The mortgage lender’s shares slid to a new 52-week low of 52.50p following the meeting, indicating general belief that the most likely outcome is nationalisation, even if a private sector solution would be preferable.

Elsewhere, our customers also took profits from Scottish and Southern Energy. The energy provider performed strongly over the last quarter since its slump in September. Last October, the Company forecast that results for 2007/08 would be slightly ahead of consensus predictions. It also discussed its plans to invest £600m in coal, gas, hydro and wind development projects until the end of the decade and has kicked off this investment plan with vigour over the last few months. In early January the Company’s share price reached an annual high of 1,702p, though this has slipped back 9.22 per cent over the last week to 1,545p per share.

TD Waterhouse Top Ten Retail Investor Buys & Sells for week ending 16 January 2008

Top 10 Buys
1 Royal Bank of Scotland Group
2 Marks and Spencer Group
3 Lloyds TSB Group
4 Woolworths Group
5 Northern Rock
6 Tesco
7 Barclays
8 Barratt Developments
9 Standard Life
10 Meldex International

Top 10 Sells
1 Standard Life
2 Bradford & Bingley
3 Royal Bank of Scotland Group
4 Northern Rock
5 Vodafone Group
6 Scottish & Southern Energy
7 Rolls Royce Group
8 Barclays
9 GlaxoSmithKline
10 BT Group

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