By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Equity trading on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) finished lower on Friday with the all-share index losing by 0.62 percent after the previous day’s marginal gain of 0.63 percent.
The benchmark index, which opened at 25,409.06 points on Friday, shed 158.69 points to finish at 25,250.37 points.
In the same vein, the market capitalisation depreciated by N55 billion to close at N8.74 trillion against N8.8 trillion it opened.
However, the volume of shares traded at the market on Friday rose by 113 million with investors exchanging a total of 259 million shares at N2.4 billion in 2,402 deals compared with 146.7 million shares transacted the previous day at N1.8 billion in 2,563 deals.
Business Post reports that Nestle suffered the highest loss on the floor of the NSE on Friday, shedding N6 to close at N570 per share.
It was followed by Nigerian Breweries, which declined by N3.99k to end at N130 per share, while Forte Oil came third after going down by N2.64k to finish at N50.35k per share.
Also, Unilever dropped 66k to finish at N28.50k per share and GlaxoSmithKline sank by 65k to close at N14.10k per share.
Conversely, Beta Glass chalked up N1.82k to end at N38.27k per share to lead the gainers’ chart on Friday.
It was trailed by Stanbic, which rose by 81k to finish at N17.36k per share and UACN, which appreciated by 58k to close at N12.60k per share.
In the same vein, UCAP progressed by 17k to end at N3.67k per share and Mansard went up by 7k to finish at N1.57k per share.
AIICO and Zenith Bank were investors delight with the former accounting for 97.5 million shares sold for N53.7 million, while the latter transacted 28.4 million units for N419.3 million.
Dipo Olowookere 
Adedapo Adesanya