Daily Mail, London, market report column

(Daily Mail (London) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) May 10--Theo Walcott or Peter Crouch? One person who does not care who plays up front for England in next month's World Cup is John Clare.

The boss of DSG International knows that Sven's selection will make no difference whatsoever to the fact that the Dixons-to-Currys electrical retailer should benefit from a summer sales boom in flat-screen TVs, as Joe Public upgrades ahead of the football extravaganza in Germany.

DSG rose 5 3/4p to 194 1/4p on hefty turnover of 62m as broker Deutsche Bank upgraded to buy from sell ahead of today's pre-close trading statement. Analyst Rod Whitehead says it will be a major beneficiary of a TV boom.

Tellies may only be about 12pc of group sales, but the Deutsche man expects them to display like-for-like sales growth in double digits for at least the next three years. During the last year, flat screen sales have doubled.

On the other side of the street, B&Q's owner Kingfisher touched 245 1/2p on persistent US takeover speculation before closing 2 1/2p dearer at 238 1/2p. UBS upgraded to buy from neutral, citing an increase in activity in the UK housing market. It means that trading levels at B&Q should have bottomed out.

Charles Dunstone's mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse buzzed 5p higher to 359 3/4p after Bear Stearns upgraded its target price to 415p from 375p.

Now valued at 3.2bn, Carphone is knocking on the door of the Footsie and stands an outside chance of promotion when the FTSE Steering Committee next meets on June 16.

Mobile phone giant Vodafone, 4p better at 130p, provided 12 points of the Footsie's 38.5-point gain at 6105.6 amid speculation that Verizon Communications has offered 20bn-plus for the mobile phone giant's 44.4pc stake in Verizon Wireless.

Vodafone apparently rejected the approach, with the view that an offer closer to 27bn would be a correct valuation.

Wall Street rose 43 points at the outset on hopes that today's expected 1/4pc rise in US interest rates to 5pc will be the last of the cycle before they start to come down.

Vague gossip of Warren Buffett stakebuilding lifted confectionery giant Cadbury Schweppes to 557p before the shares closed 5p dearer at 550 1/2p.

Gold glittered again and reached the magic level of $700 an ounce as speculators continued to chase it higher on the back of dollar weakness and renewed concern about Iran's nuclear stand-off with the West. Miners responded with Anglo American up 49p more to 2527p and Rio Tinto 47p better at 3255p.

Royal & SunAlliance held at 142p after Morgan Stanley placed 40m shares at 141p a share with various institutional shareholders.

Upmarket estate agent Savills jumped 62p to 1465p on vague talk of a bid from 19.5pc shareholder Trammell Crow, one of North America's largest diversified commercial realestate services groups.

Reflecting a strong order book for its NinaSun range of solar protection furniture, Caldwell jumped 3 1/2p to 17 1/2p. Since its roll out in mid-January, the company has won orders from 14 garden centres around the UK.

Earthport, the specialist provider of secure electronic payments services, rose 1 3/4p to 39 1/4p on hearing it has signed an agreement to become the global payments partner of US-based BurnLounge, the digital music service. Rumours also suggest computer giant Microsoft is close to Burn-Lounge and is about to acquire a strategic stake in Earthport.

After declaring that ticket sales of its Monday lottery game were at the lower end of expectations, charities lottery group Chariot (UK) collapsed 24p to 111p.

International Brand Licensing held at 24 3/4p ahead of a positive trading update. The group is rumoured to have sold its Admiral Greek clothing licence for 750,000.

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