Investors capitalise as Taylor Wimpey's predicament continues

Angus Rigby, Chief Executive Officer, TD Waterhouse comments: "Our customers continued to trade heavily this week with a strong focus on UK housebuilder, Taylor Wimpey, whose tales of woe have showed no sign of improving, despite a glimmer of hope from the Bank of England when it cut rates back to 3%. Mervyn King announced this Wednesday that the MPC were prepared to consider cutting to 'whatever level is necessary' to stave off a long and deep recession. Taylor Wimpey also revealed that efforts to renegotiate its bank debt hadn't gone to plan, resulting in shares dipping as much as 19%. Our customers saw an opportunity to grab shares at a lower price, placing Taylor Wimpey in this week's table with almost 11% of the top ten buy trades. There are still many, though, who clearly can't see light at the end of the tunnel and have been selling while they can, leaving the housebuilder at number 7 on the sell table.

"Following on from last week, the banking sector continued to be prominent in our customers trading behaviour this week, with banks filling the top three places in both the buy and sells. Despite efforts to calm investors, there are still uncertain times ahead and the banking sector will still have much to prove. Investor unease was evident as Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays vied for the top two slots in the buy and sell tables.

Elsewhere, Vodafone has been of interest to TD customers this week as it announced that it was embarking on a £1bn cost cutting exercise that may lead to further job losses, as well as cutting its full year revenue outlook for the second time in four months. As a result, the mobile phone group shot up this week's sell table with more than 12% of the top ten sales. However, they still remained high in the buys table too as it was suggested that they still had the capabilities of investing in future revenue growth opportunities and expected significant growth in key emerging markets over the coming years.

"Man Group's appearance in the top ten buy table comes after a week where it lost a third of its market value after a large fall in half year profits. Morgan Stanley also raised concerns about further deleveraging and redemptions which added to the hedge fund manager's misery and dropped it to a three year low. Clearly many of our customers saw this as an opportunity, boosting Man Group into the top ten buys table with 6.5% of all of the top ten trades."