Retail investors turn to small caps for profits

Retail investors turned their attention to smaller stocks and sell orders rose, which suggests that investors may be increasingly uncertain about how much further the rally has to go.

Angus Rigby, chief executive officer at TD Waterhouse, said: 'It seems our customers may have been looking much further afield in the hope of making profits.'

Among the stocks attracting interest are exploration and development group Amur Minerals.

With a market cap of only £15.2 million, the group is one of the smallest companies ever to enter the TD Waterhouse top 10 most-bought stocks. It has stormed to the fifth spot after releasing a new reserve estimate of $1.8bn for the nickel copper contained in its Russia-based Mary Krumkon deposit.

Oil and gas explorer Gulf Keystone Petroleum took third place in the top 10 buys, with Taylor Wimpey, Victoria Oil & Gas, Yell and Provexis also in the top 10.

Banks still dominated the list though, with Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds taking the number one and number two spot on both the buy and the sell lists respectively.

As well as showing that investors have been turning their attention to smaller caps, the data from the execution-only broker also suggests that investors may be increasingly nervous about how much higher shares have to go.

In the week to Tuesday, the number of customers selling shares outweighed the number of buyers by 4%, and there were 41% more sell orders than in the previous week.