Cadbury climbed high on the list of the most popular stocks sold yesterday after hopes of a rival takeover bid from Italian firm Ferrero were dashed.

The Italian producer of Nutella and Tic Tacs said that it was not willing to beat the bid already submitted by US food giant Kraft, resulting in aggressive sales by investors.

In all, Cadbury accounted for 5.2 per cent of all sales yesterday, according to data released this morning from Barclays Stockbrokers. In the morning session yesterday, TD Waterhouse said that Cadbury had accounted for a smaller fraction of sales, but the sale of banking stocks dropped in the afternoon session.

Hedge fund manager MAN Group reappeared in the top ten sales for the first time in a week. While it only accounted for 1.1 per cent of all stocks sold, its price slid by 3 per cent yesterday.

There was no let up in the number of investors keen to offload their mining stock holdings yesterday, with Xstrata representing 2.2 per cent of all sales and Vatukoula for 1.2 per cent.

Predictably, banking stocks saw no let up in their trading activity. Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group and RBS appeared in the top three buys once again.
 
Barclays Stockbrokers
Trading top ten
Monday 25 January 2010
 
Buys
1. Barclays, 10.6 per cent
2. Lloyds Banking Group, 5.4 per cent
3. Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), 3.6 per cent
4. Xstrata, 2.7 per cent
5. Vodafone Group, 2.2 per cent
6. Vatukoula Gold Mines, 2 per cent
7. BP, 2 per cent
8. Rio Tinto, 1.5 per cent
9. Aviva, 1.5 per cent
10. GlaxoSmithKline, 1.4 per cent
 
Sales
1. Barclays, 6.5 per cent
2. Cadbury, 5.2 per cent
3. RBS, 4.7 per cent
4. Lloyds Banking Group, 3.7 per cent
5. Xstrata, 2.2 per cent
6. BP, 1.3 per cent
7. Angel Biotechnology, 1.2 per cent
8. Vatukoula Gold Mines, 1.2 per cent
9. Viology, 1.2 per cent
10. Man Group, 1 per cent