*Oil stocks such as Seplat hammered

Equity transactions at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) were upbeat on Thursday as the market indicators improved by 1.21 per cent.

The market capitalisation closed at N9.68 trillion, up from N9.57 trillion posted on Wednesday.

Equally, the All-Share Index increased by 349.58 points to close at 29,311.25 points against 28,961.67 points achieved on Wednesday.

Analysis of the price movement chart indicated that Nestle topped the gainers’ table with N38.53 increase in its share value to close at N809.14 per share.

Nigerian Breweries came second with N8 gain to close at N140 per share while Lafarge Wapco appreciated by N4.82 to close at N71.32 per share.

Guinness appreciated by N4.01 to close at N119.01 per share and Forte Oil gained N3.66 to close at N208.99 per share.

Seplat led the losers league with a loss of N13.31. The battered stock closed the day’s transaction at N252.93 per share.

Conoil followed with a loss of N4.79 to close at N44.44 per share while UACN depreciated by N41.80 to close at N34.30 per share.

Presco declined by N1.11 to close at N22 per share and Oando Oil lost 68k to close at N15.12 per share.

The volume of shares traded depreciated by 337.24 per cent as a total of 302.406 million shares worth N3.70 billion were transacted by investors in 5,199 deals.

This was in contrast to 481.850 million shares worth N6.21 billion traded in 3,822 deals on Wednesday.

FCMB emerged the toast of investors, accounting for 42.81 million shares worth N117.71 billion exchanged by investors in 49 deals.

FBN Holdings followed with a total of 36.17 million shares valued N288.14 million in 703 deals, while Transcorp exchanged 29.17 million shares worth N78.36 million in 332 deals.