TD Waterhouse customers add Sainsbury's to the shopping list

Angus Rigby, Chief Executive Officer, TD Waterhouse comments: "Our customers looked to Sainsbury's for a bargain this week, which made a rare appearance in our popular trades tables reaching eighth place in the top ten buys. Customers may have added the supermarket chain to their shopping list after a reported slowdown in sales growth between the first two quarters of the year caused its share price to fall by 3.3% last week. While like-for-like sales were up 5.4% from the same period last year they failed to beat the 7.8% growth recorded for the first quarter. However, shares picked up again after the store announced sales of its non-food ranges were increasing at almost three times the rate of food.

"Mining giant Xstrata climbed to second place in the sells this week - accounting for 14% of overall top ten sells as our customers may have been looking to take profit from the firm's recent surge in share price. Shares were up 8.54% compared to the previous week after the miner revealed plans to sell its 70% interest in copper-gold miner El Morro to Barrick Gold in a $465m deal. Xstrata hopes the sale will enable it to concentrate resources on its priority developments. Meanwhile, Xstrata is now largely expected to walk away from its potential merger approach with Anglo American.

"Balfour Beatty also made a very rare appearance in the top ten this week, landing at ninth place in the buys. The engineering and construction group caught the attention of customers after being named as the preferred bidder for a large schools project in the North West of England - set to be its tenth public/private partnership education project. The deal will see Balfour Beatty building or remodeling a total of 33 schools in Blackburn, Darwen and Bolton. This latest news caps off a busy few months for Balfour. At the beginning of October, the firm was awarded a contract to build new schools and student accommodation worth £134m and only last month it acquired US company Parsons Brinckerhoff for £380m."