Vietnamese shares fell on Thursday morning, dragged by the contraction of large-cap companies.

The benchmark VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange dropped 0.64 per cent to end at 994.14 points.

The VN-Index lost 0.77 per cent on Wednesday.

Large-cap companies contracted under selling pressure.

The large-cap VN30-Index slipped 0.82 per cent to 909.52 points in the morning session.

Twenty-five of the 30 largest stocks by market value and trading liquidity in the VN30 basket declined.

Only two blue chips increased.

Among large-cap decliners were retailer Mobile World (MWG), construction group Coteccons (CTD), property developer Vingroup (VIC), Military Bank (MBB) and SSI Securities Corp (SSI).

Those large-cap firms dragged their sector indices down between 0.6 per cent and 2.4 per cent, data on vietstock.vn showed.

Mid-cap and small-cap stocks also underperformed as the two indices decreased by 0.35 per cent and 0.09 per cent.

Nearly 90 million shares were traded on the southern bourse, worth VND2 trillion (US$86 million).

On the Ha Noi Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index was down 0.47 per cent to close at 104.42 points.

The northern market index edged down 0.55 per cent in the previous trading day.

Nearly 14.7 million shares were exchanged on the northern bourse, worth VND156 billion.

The afternoon trading session starts at 1pm. — VNS