Some buying opportunities on weakness

The FTSE 100 continued to fall today and is currently down 55 to 5,011 after falling below the 5,000 mark earlier in the day. A move back to the 5,000 level has meant that I have been making some selective buys on weakness on stocks I have been watching for the last few weeks as they hit my target price. Although further falls in the market are possible, quite a few names are back into the "good value" range. Timing the absolute bottom is never easy, so its a question of picking away rather than going all in.

BP (BP.) is down 19p or 4.4% to £4.11 following US president Barack Obama's comments that he'd sack the British company’s chief executive Tony Hayward. During an interview due to be aired tonight he said "He wouldn't be working for me after any of those statements," referring to Haywards comments like "it's a big ocean". A second piece of bad news came for BP when Russia’s state-run gas giant Gazprom said it had no need for the British oil company’s Kovykta gas field in Siberia which at one point in 2007 was said to be worth nearly $1 billion. Although I am a little nervous about BP, I today bought a position at £4.13 with a 5% guaranteed stop loss given the speculative nature of this share.

Rockhopper (RKH) announced that it had raised £48.5 million for the further development of its North Falkland basin field with the issue of 17,320,000 new ordinary shares at 280 pence each. I took the opportunity on this news to re-establish a holding in the company at £2.86 following yesterday's 8% fall as rumours of the placing circulated. I have also bought a small holding in Falkland Oil and Gas (FOGL) for potential gains on a discovery on the Toroa prospect which is currently being drilled to a depth of 2700 metres and was spudded on June 1st.  Target depth is expected 35 days from June 1st.

The fall in ITV (ITV) back to 52p also was taken to buy back a holding in the company which has drifted from the low 70p range in the last month or so and should benefit from an increase in advertising during the World Cup.