Investors turned their back on retail stocks in 2005, preferring to trade blue chip bank stocks, one of Britain's leading brokers said.
Lloyds TSB, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland were three of the most traded stocks among retail investors in 2005. Angus Rigby, chief operating officer of TD Waterhouse said interest in the banking sector had helped offset the slowdown in trading of stricken High Street stocks that were usually a stalwart of investors' portfolios.
For the first half of 2006, the broker's online clients tip the drugs and healthcare sector as a high flyer.
This year, the only retail stock to appear in the top 10 lists of buys and sells for 2005 was Tesco.
"In the retail sector, Tesco's phenomenal performance over the last year puts (it) head and shoulders above the rest of its peers and has given retail-friendly investors the opportunity to make money in otherwise abject conditions," Rigby said in a commentary.
However, he said the year's hottest stock was neither a bank nor a supermarket giant but newly listed PartyGaming, which floated at 116 pence in June, giving the poker site a market capitalisation of around 4.4 billion pounds.
By July, the share had risen to 179-1/2 but plunged to 67p after the firm warned in September that new players were spending less and losing interest quicker than its hard core of customers.
Since then it has recovered, partly by adding new games.
"The float, along with the float of several other poker Web platforms has caused more comment than most IPOs put together this year and investors have been trading frenetically, looking to cash in on the action," Rigby said. "The interest in this company is truly phenomenal and at 139p it is now trading well above its initial float price."
ARM Holdings, Stanelco, Corus Group and BP completed the list of 10 most popular buys and sells for the year.
A poll conducted by TD Waterhouse among its online users showed that more than half of retail investors expected the drugs and healthcare sector to be the best performer in the first half of 2006.