Customers look for longer term profit from falling prices

Angus Rigby, Chief Executive Officer, TD Waterhouse comments: What a difference a year makes. In February 2007 shares in Barratt Developments were trading as high as £13, now they are trading at around 70 pence. This follows a bout of volatility and uncertainty that has seen the market captilisation of the UK's second biggest housebuuilder fell to close to a tenth of its value a year ago. This week Barratt's CEO attempted to calm investor fears about the future of the company, attributing blame on the unusual economic climate, while reassuring investors and shareholders that the company was not on the brink of collapse.

It was a similar story for Taylor Wimpey, Barratt's slightly bigger competitor and the UK's largest housebuilding group. Barratt and Taylor Wimpey enter our top ten buys this week indicating that at these heavily reduced prices, and despite anticipated dividend cuts, some of our customers see an opportunity to build greater gains over the long term.

The turmoil in the banking sector continues to impact our table again this week. The sector has remained volatile and all the main players have been widely traded again by our customers, with banks accounting for 85% of buys and 90% of sells.

To cap of a tremulous week for banks and housebuilders, the FTSE Group confirmed last night that Alliance & Leicester and Permisson will be among those to be demoted from the FTSE 100 to the FTSE 250. This is a result of the FTSE's UK Series Quarterly Review, designed to ensure the indices are a true reflection of the markets. The changes will take effect from Monday 23 June.

Elsewhere our customers have opted to take profits from domestic energy providers whose share prices have fared better this week. Back in March 2008 Scottish and Southern Energy, Britain's second biggest energy supplier, unveiled double-digit increases to its gas and electricity bills - the last of the big suppliers to do so. Increases in energy bills are always badly received by customers and investors alike. More decisive will be the impact of increased wholesale gas prices, which have been driven up by the rising cost of oil. Scottish and Southern Energy is the 5th most sold stock by our customers trading this week, Centrica comes in at number 10.