Investors capitalise on trading opportunities as BP dominates

As noise around the BP oil spill continues, investors are seeing buying opportunities in the company's stock, according to figures from Barclays Stockbrokers, the UK's largest online execution-only stockbroker.

The surge in investor confidence in BP last week shows what can happen when a company announces positive news as on 13 July, 23% of all trades executed by Barclays Stockbrokers clients were in BP. Investors are also seeking to profit from other opportunities as two companies - Petro Matad and Blinkx, entered the top 10 daily trades last week and have continued to feature since.

Paul Inkster, Head of Product, Barclays Stockbrokers, comments: "Over the last week, we have seen clients continue to broaden their horizons looking for investment opportunities. The market volatility witnessed over the last few months may have made some investors take a more cautious approach to their FTSE investments, but this is certainly not putting them off trading - and many are still feeling confident the FTSE will deliver good returns over the next quarter.  Trading in BP continues to dominate, and 16% of all trades executed by Barclays Stockbrokers clients on 19 July were in BP.

"But as clients continue to react to news events, we have seen companies such as Petro Matad and Blinkx, appear in our top 10 daily trades in recent days. The share price of Petro Matad, a Mongolian oil explorer, jumped from 59p to 89p on 13 July after the company struck oil in one of their drilling projects in Mongolia and the announcement had a strong positive impact on trading activity on that day. Also, we saw Blinkx, the video search engine, feature in the top ten daily trades list after announcing it had been selected by Samsung for use in their phone applications."