This from Julian:

Container manufacturer Rexam (LSE:REX) is a defensive play. Its share price rose about 20% after good interim numbers. The business model is easy to grasp – Rexam makes plastic and aluminium containers for a range of purposes, feeding into the relative safety of the consumer staples sector. Its pricing policy means it is also insulated from commodity price rises – the costs are shouldered by the goods’ producers. The European business has continued to grow strongly, as has South America, although the US is a little softer. Rexam is well positioned in the fastest-growing countries thanks to its expansionary capital spending programme. The shares yield 4.9%.

We have bought into Scottish & Southern Energy (LSE:SSE) on a yield of 4.3%. The group has benefited from higher electricity prices and the need to secure our future energy supply; it is involved in alternatives such as wind power. The dividend has doubled since 2000, and investment opportunities will provide continued growth. We also believe that future earnings are predictable, which is particularly useful in the current environment.

Temporary-power provider Aggreko (LSE:AGK) is still a favoured industrials stock. It now benefits from a greater profile in China on the back of its work at the Beijing Olympics, and interim figures beat City hopes. Compared to last year, its return on capital employed (ROC) was up 28%, revenues were up 28%, trading profit 42%, and earnings per share (EPS) 45%. The interim dividend was also raised by 25%. The business is driven mainly by strong operations in emerging markets, which help to offset softer growth in the US and Europe. Aggreko recently bought a small Canadian operator, which will give it access to the $10bn oil-sands market. We agree with management that the imbalance between supply and demand will continue to push the business forward. We have recently taken profits but remain buyers on weakness.

HSBC (LSE:HSBA) is our preferred play in a volatile sector. It looks overvalued now, but it is well capitalised and diversified, and has so far refused to bow to its ‘white knight’ status, having passed on HBoS and cancelled a deal to buy Korea Exchange Bank. HSBC is now the world’s largest bank by market capitalisation at $180bn; its exposure to emerging markets is reassuring, and we believe the bank will easily maintain its credit ratios relative to peers, and keep paying cash dividends. Buy on weakness.

Source: Four stocks to snap up on weakness

Hedge fund manager Crispin Odey has paid himself £28m after his hedge fund made £55m from betting against the sector. And well done to him. After all, plenty of banking executives got hefty bonuses last year for losing money, so people can hardly complain when someone gets a bonus for actually doing his job competently.

Now Mr Odey was apparently a bit early in his call. “We had a very average 2006 because he was positioned and it wasn’t working yet,” Odey Asset Management chief executive David Stewart told The Telegraph.

But it shows that it’s not true that no one saw the credit crunch coming. Sure, we may not have known exactly how the blow-up would manifest itself. But it was obvious to many people in the City and on Wall Street that something had to give.

The bad news for the banks is that it seems Mr Odey reckons there’s still a lot of money to be made from betting against them

There is more weakness ahead for the banks

Sources “close to” Odey Asset Management tell The Telegraph that “we can see why there might be a rally [in banking stocks] in the short term, but in the longer term we see more weakness ahead. Banks will need a lot more capital.”

It is certainly going to be tough out there. HSBC (LON:HSBA), one of the most resilient banks of the past year, reported more write downs yesterday (see: Why there’s more bad news to come from the banks for more). But perhaps the most worrying aspect of its results statement was its warning on the outlook for Asia.

Banks with emerging market exposure have been seen as sheltered from much of the carnage. But as HSBC chairman Stephen Green put it: “I don’t believe the emerging markets have completely decoupled. There is no way a serious downturn in the US will leave Asia immune.”

The group still expects the region to grow, but “with less momentum than in the recent past.” Profits at its Hong Kong unit fell 8% to $3.1bn, where “it is apparent that corporate activity in some sectors is slowing.”

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Source: There’s Still Money to Be Made from Banks

And the picture that’s emerging isn’t very pretty. Not only have the numbers so far been worse than expected, there seems no end in sight to the sorry tales of credit write-down losses. It looks like there’s a shedload of more bad news on the way.

Today it was the turn of HSBC to face the music, and it duly coughed up another telephone number credit write-down. Last week, Lloyds TSB and HBOS turned in the sort of results that would have been seen as quite unthinkable until recently. Another round of write-offs, totalling a combined £1.7bn, blitzed the income statements and slashed profits by more than 50%.

But HSBC has just unveiled write-downs three times as large. The bank, which reports in US dollars, has set aside another $10.1bn (£5.1bn) this year for its ‘loan-loss reserves’, i.e. a charge against the bank’s capital to allow for losses on assets that have gone bad.

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Source:  Why There’s More Bad News to Come From the Banks