It was a week of contrasting fortunes for Charles Wilson’s Booker and his former employers at Marks & Spencer. As M&S reported its first dip in full-year pre-tax profits in three years, Booker published a 27% jump in its annual profits to £90.8m.

On Thursday, news of the leap in profits sent the wholesaler’s share price up 6% to 77.5p by midday. The results prompted Investec to increase its EBIT margin forecast for next year from 2.33% to 2.4%.

“We remain firm fans of Booker in this challenging market,” said the broker.

Under Wilson’s leadership, Booker has defied the economic downturn - guided by a focus on ‘choice, price and service’ and boosted by online growth, successful acquisitions and a fast-developing business in India.

Since Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in September 2008, the Booker share price has almost tripled from 26.5p.

Shares at M&S - where Wilson was Sir Stuart Rose’s right-hand man before becoming Booker CEO in 2005 - had also been faring well since the start of the crisis and are currently around 340p, up from 201p in September 2008. However, this is some 10% lower than April levels, the price taking a tumble after the company was forced to admit it ran out of key clothing lines during a cold snap in February.

And this week the retailer reported a 1.2% drop in pre-tax profits to £714m, which was slightly better than expected but not enough to spark a share price recovery.

On Tuesday, when the results were published, the share price edged up just 2p to 344.3p as analysts expressed concern about the clothing performance, especially the decline in womenswear market share.

The following day, Ocado reported that it expected sales growth in the second quarter of 13% - up from 10.9% in the previous quarter. It added that the Hatfield warehouse was operating at record capacity.

After opening down at 99.8p, the Ocado announcement was enough to propel the share price up to 107.4p. The high proportion of Ocado shares out on loan to short-sellers makes the stock liable to violent price movements.

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