Resource stocks dominate the list of winners

24th Dec 2010 20:20

In the unlikely event that a family member will buy you a TARDIS or some other time travelling device for Christmas, here is an overview of stocks that you should have bought at the end of 2009.Oil and gas-focused investor and adviser Parkmead Group put in a late spurt to claim the title of best performing stock of 2010, racking up a 34% rise on Christmas Eve to pip mining stock Condor Resources. The rise seems to have been inspired by news on 23 December that Nightwish Investment had increased its stake to 3.36% of the company. Even before that announcement the company's shares had been a hot property, with the catalyst for the demand being the appointment, in October, of Dana Petroleum's founder and chief executive, Tom Cross, as executive chairman.Cross built Dana up into a FTSE 250 company before reluctantly capitulating to a hostile takeover bid from the Korean National Oil Corporation. Shareholders are gambling that Cross will work the same sort of magic on Parkmead.List of best performers in 2010   Stock Price on 1 Jan Price on 24 Dec % change 1 Parkmead Group (The)  1.08 24.5 2169% 2 Condor Resources  0.43 9.75 2167% 3 Arian Silver  3.75 44.25 1080% 4 Niche Group  0.55 5.5 900% 5 Encore Oil  14.75 132.75 800% 6 Beowulf Mining  3.5 29.5 743% 7 Chariot Oil & Gas  23.5 192 717% 8 Premier Man.Hdg.  0.28 2.25 704% 9 Nautical Petroleum  49 391.25 698% 10 Red Rock Resources  1.85 14.5 684% 11 CML Microsystems  26 163.5 529% 12 Avesco Group  21.5 122.5 470% 13 Mulberry Group  170 906 433% 14 Elektron  8.12 42 417% 15 Blinkx  16.75 86 413% Condor Resources, meanwhile, is a stock that started the year with a share price not even in single digits but which ended it almost in double figures. The gold and silver miner, focused exclusively on exploration in South America, saw its share price take flight after an upbeat interim results statement in late September was quickly followed by encouraging drilling results from its Nicaraguan assets.Completing a clean sweep of the top three for AIM-listed resource stocks, Arian Silver , the Mexico-based silver exploration, development and production company, had a strong fourth quarter, prompted by some encouraging operations updates.At the beginning of the week before Christmas the company announced that mining at the San Jose property is progressing well with 15.2% of the total programme now completed, and the first batch of concentrate consisting of 12.4kg of silver per tonne. Additionally, Arian's chief executive officer Jim Williams said that the San Jose Vein presents exciting potential in 2011, as the group increases its production while silver prices are expected to rise.Niche Group, the investment company that switched into oil and gas exploration in May, saw its share price go moon-bound after it invested £5.6m in Oman Resources to finance exploration of a licence block in the Tuz Golu basin in south central Turkey.John McKeon, who was a founder of AIM-quoted oil and gas explorer Circle Oil, is a consultant to Niche and director of Oman. He is also a consultant to Premier Management, which is transforming itself from a sports agent to a potential gold miner in Kyrgyzstan, and an investor in RAM Investment Group. McKeon's associate Donal Boylan is an executive director of Niche. The aforementioned Premier Management Holdings was another of the top ten performers of the year, despite the shares shedding 28% of their value over the last month.By now, you should be picking up on two themes from this review of top performers: the stocks are invariably small companies, and involved in either mining or oil. We have to move outside of the top ten risers before we move beyond the resource sector, to the world of technology stocks.CML Microsystems, which designs, manufactures and markets a broad range of semiconductors, primarily for global communication and data storage markets, rose steadily throughout the year but the share price really kicked on in October when it announced an agreement under which Toshiba Electronics Europe will provide a variety of Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) design and manufacturing services to CML's microprocessor division Hyperstone.Giant TV screen renter Avesco had investors clamouring for the shares in December as it looked likely to benefit from the court case between Celador and Walt Disney over the US profits from TV show "Who wants to be a millionaire?".Avesco, which has a stake in Celador, stands to earn $60m from the court case. Avesco said on 22 December that Disney's appeal against the decision had been thrown out.