Sell pressure: NSE market capitalisation drops by N80bn

After over a week bullish trend, activities on the Nigerian Stock Exchange  (NSE) on Friday ended negatively with the market indices dropping by 0.81 per cent.
The market capitalisation shed N80 billion or 0.81 per cent to close at N9.745 trillion,  against N9.825 trillion posted on Thursday.
Also, the All-Share Index dipped 231.24 points or 0.81 per cent to close at 28,192.46, compared with 28,423.70 recorded on Thursday.
A breakdown of the price movement chart showed that Dangote Cement recorded the highest loss,  dropping by N8.50 to close at N165 per share.
Unilever followed with a loss of N1.44 to close at N38.01 and Okomu Oil dropped  by N1 to close at N50 per share.
Stanbic IBTC was down also by N1 to close at N26, while Oando declined by 92k to close at N8.62 per share.
Conversely, Nestle led the gainers’ table for the day,  gaining N35 to close at N835 per share.
Seplat followed with a gain of N16.43 to close at N400 and Nigerian Breweries increased by N6.19 to close at N149 per share.
Total Nigeria improved by N5.90 to close at N268.90, while Guinness increased by N2.94 to close at N69 per share.
In spite of the drop in market indices, the volume of shares traded closed higher as investors bought and 1.06 billion shares valued at N9.19 billion  exchanged in 5,342 deals.
This was against the 801.08 million shares worth N7.82 billion transacted in 6,481 deals on Thursday.
The banking stocks remained the most traded with FBN Holdings emerging investors delight, accounting for 538.31 million shares worth N2.16 billion.
Zenith Bank followed with 106.35 million shares valued at N1.97 billion and GTBank traded 74.86 million shares worth N2.27 billion.
Diamond Bank sold 59.19 million shares valued at N59.56 million and FCMB Group  achieved a turnover of  45.44 million shares worth N49.75 million.