Newly opened accounts in February increased by nearly 28,000 on-month to January, but they were still low compared to the average level of the past two years, according to data from the Viet Nam Securities Depository (VSD).

In February, domestic retail investors opened 63,731 new accounts and institutional investors opened 133 new accounts.

In the first two months of the year, domestic investors opened a total of less than 100,000 new accounts. At the end of February, the total number of domestic retail investor accounts reached 6.94 million accounts.

After a surge from 2021 to the first half of 2022, the influx of new investors has slowed down significantly.

Liquidity, therefore, decreased gradually for the fourth month in a row. In February, the average matching value on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE) was only about VND8.6 trillion per session, down 10 per cent month-on-month. The figure continued to decline sharply to only about VND6.5 trillion per session since the beginning of March.

The drop in liquidity was partly due to a reduction in foreign investors' transactions after a period of fast and strong buying. In February, foreign investors net sold VND640 billion on HoSE. The trend continued in the first few days of March.

Last month, foreign investors opened 176 new accounts, a sharp increase from 112 in the previous month. Specifically, retail investors opened 151 new accounts while institutional investors opened 25 new accounts in the past month. At the end of February, there were a total of 43,029 accounts belonging to foreign investors. — VNS