Lloyds claims a quarter of top ten stock trades

Angus Rigby, Chief Executive Officer, TD Waterhouse comments: "Our customers continued to buy heavily again this week, with buy trades more than doubling the sells.

"Lloyds was flavour of the week, accounting for almost a third of the top ten buys (30%) and a quarter (25%) of overall buys and sells. Customers snapped up 82% more buys than sells in the banking giant as the deadline for its open offer came to a close last Friday. The offer allowed existing shareholder to purchase 0.6213 new ordinary shares for every ordinary share already held at an offer price of 38.43p. Our customers snapped up 61% more shares in Lloyds than last week as overall take-up of the open offer reached 87%. The revenue generated from the offer will be used to redeem £3.5m of preference shares bought by the Treasury as part of the Government bail out last year. It's been an eventful week for the part-nationalised bank after directors faced a backlash from shareholders over its ill fated takeover of troubled HBOS at Lloyds' AGM last week, at which the bank announced 510 job losses and plans to cut a further 1,660 with the closure of its Cheltenham and Gloucester branch network on Tuesday.

"Following the recent successful share price performance of stocks in the mining sector, Jubilee Platinum makes its first appearance in our top ten tables this week. Jubilee has climbed into seventh place in the buys table as the price of platinum strengthens. Buys in the mining, exploration and development firm were almost a third higher then sells (31%), perhaps reflecting the company's rising share price over the past month. Last week the miner said it will proceed with a feasibility study across three farms within its 63% owned Tjate project in South Africa after reports indicated they could contain an attributable 44m ounces of platinum-group elements and gold.

"Africa-focused gas company Gasol has also crept into the top ten this week at seventh place in the sells. The company recently raised £1m through a placing of shares with two of its principal shareholders, African Gas Development Corporation and Afren.