Your weekly stockmarket update from Brewin Dolphin, Hamilton House, 6 Nantillo St, Poundbury. 0845 213 1280. www.brewindolphin.co.uk

THE stockmarket is a strange place.

There are times when it weathers streams of negative newsflow with hardly a flutter and others, like the last quarter, when the same story seems to have recurring effects.

The latter is illogical but it is a feature of the marketplace and expectations should accommodate its influence.

The week ahead is likely to be a test of that accommodation, with an interesting mix of reports that touch the recurring stories of the moment.

Centrica delivers its 2007 report tomorrow, which covers a year that has been a rollercoaster ride for domestic and commercial energy prices. Thursday will also see BAE Systems (British Aerospace as was) reporting its degree of success in capturing benefits from the fact that, contrary to most other engineering trends at present, global defence business is booming.

Kingfisher is timetabled to release a trading update on Thursday, which should give a useful insight into the current retail trading environment and the company's expectations for the crucial months ahead.

My thesaurus lists more than 20 replacements one can use in place of the word difficult' but we will see how inventive Kingfisher's own correspondents can be.

On Friday all eyes will be on the full year results coming from Lloyds TSB.

To its credit Lloyds has put in a fair effort in recent months to arrange a series of one-to-one meetings with City investment firms.

These were aimed at dispelling irrational fears about the effect the 'credit crunch' and the notorious 'sub-prime mortgage' debacle is likely to have on its business.

That is a first in my experience and it just goes to highlight the sensitivity of those issues.

If you look at the effect those issues have had on the UK banking sector as a whole you can understand why the effort is so important.

Exactly a year ago today the FTSE-350 Banking Sector index hit a high point for the last decade at 11597.93.

Last month that index hit a low of 7297.88, implying an average fall of 37 per cent across the sector as a whole.

That is quite a contrast to the more muted 10.5 per cent fall in the headline FTSE 100 index between the same dates.

In the early part of next week the focus will turn to the even more evocative theme of 'the property market', with commercial property investor Hammerson reporting full figures on Monday and housebuilder Persimmon giving its finals for the year on Tuesday morning.

We should brace ourselves for thesaurus overload.

Stephen Taylor