Keep an Eye

NPT - Mid 17.25p
Reason - Slowly rising for the last couple days from support, last week acquired Chariot (UK) PLC's online charity lottery operations as it moves to enhance its television-based interactive gaming business.

Friday's market reports:

Telegraph
Telegraph (Bloomberg summary)
The Times
FT
The Guardian
The Independent
This is Money

Some other stories of possible interest:

Torex profit warning sparks inquiry
Telegraph Podcast on Torex (MP3) - interesting (and one unhappy hedge-fund manager!)
Antigua defeats US in gaming law challenge
'These subpoenas and arrests are sheer hypocrisy'
Miners ask UN to stop China excluding them from Africa
'Dr Doom' Tony Dye to wind up hedge fund because of ill health

THE self-professed top dog for music last week emerged as the real dog of the stock market: HMV, the high-street music retailer, has become one of the most shorted UK stocks of all time.

HMVs share price rose a little when it emerged recently that Brandes Investment Partners, the value investor, had increased its stake in the music retailer. The American fund manager is now the groups biggest shareholder with 40.8m shares, a 10.15% stake.
HMV is going to the dogs

A couple of years ago, MRW was in a vaguely similar situation, and I believe Brandes started buying in the 190s. The sellers kept the upper hand and the price sank to the low 170s, but the Brandes style is to determine a value point after which they'll keep buying the stock within certain limits. This set up a fascinating daily battle where a weak price would suddenly receive support from some very large orders appearing on the buy side of the book. These 'Brandes orders' if that's what they were, would then proceed to chase the price up until they'd run through or they pulled off. It became predictable and I did quite well out of MRW at the time. In the last few days I've taken several points from HMV because the patterns have looked similar and although there are no certainties the 'Brandes versus Rest-of-the-World' battle may be worth a watch.

Australian shares close lower on profit taking, Wall St fall - UPDATEAsian markets summary

CS. downgraded to hold from buy - Citigroup SAB downgraded to neutral from buy - Goldman Sachs YELL upgraded to buy from neutral - target 670 - Merrill Lynch

Good morning traders!

In Asia today, the Nikkei closed up 48.53 points at 17,470.46, while the Hang Seng recently stood at 20,219.55, down 61.58 points.

New York Mercantile Exchange's main oil futures contract, light sweet crude for delivery in March, was up 42 cents at $55.84 a barrel from $55.42 in late trading in the US Friday.

Happy trading!

G.

OUTLOOK - UK smaller companies results for the 2 weeks to Feb 9

Tokyo shares close slightly higher in rangebound trade ahead of more results

London shares outlook - seen slightly higher as busy week for earnings looms

AFX UK at a glance share guide - weekend

Tokyo shares close slightly firmer ahead of more results - UPDATE

AFX UK at a glance share guide

GYG initiated at buy - target 482 - UBS

STOCKWATCH Infineon higher pre-bourse as Q1 figures in line with estimates

ULVR downgraded to hold from buy - Gilissen Research

UK smallcap opening - MicroEmissive Displays Group jumps on contract win

Think I'll Stick to Whiskey

STOCKWATCH Deutsche Telekom loses pre-bourse after profit warning

Better long Australian bottled water companies then :-)

UK smallcap opening - Corpora rallies as trading update pleasesUK smallcap opening - Best of the Best slides as profit turns to loss in H1

UK smallcap opening - 2 Ergo higher; sees FY trading beating market expectations