Private investors have increasingly been selling shares as the stock market rally slows, in order to take profits on holdings bought earlier in the year, according to the latest analysis of trades by 1.6m UK shareholders.

In October and November, individual investors sold a net £637m-worth of equities, more than treble the amount they pulled out of the market in August and September. Figures from Capita Registrars, which records private shareholdings in more than 2,000 UK and Irish companies, show that this latest sell-off takes the total value of shares sold in the past five months to £900m.