Vietnamese shares declined on Thursday, dragged by market heavyweights as selling pressure increased significantly towards the closing minutes of trading.
The market benchmark VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE) declined 0.73 per cent, to finish the trading day at 1,470.76 points.
It had risen 0.14 per cent to close Wednesday at 1,481.58 points.
The market breadth was negative as 291 stocks declined while 151 rose and 54 ended flat.
The market’s liquidity was lower than the previous session with nearly 565 million shares traded on the southern market, worth VND17 trillion (US$750.4 million).
The market witnessed strong volatility at the end of the trading session. A series of large stocks dropped sharply, extending the decrease of the VN-Index such as FPT Corporation (FPT), PetroVietnam Gas JSC (GAS), Hoa Phat Group (HPG), Masan Group (MSN), Mobile World Group (MWG), Novaland (NVL) and Vinhomes (VHM).
The banking group performed poorly at the end of the session, with Asia Commercial Bank (ACB), Vietinbank (CTG), Techcombank (TCB), VPBank (VPB), Military Bank (MBB), Sacombank (STB) and Eximbank (EIB) all falling.
On the positive side, securities stocks gained strongly and helped lessen the market’s fall, with gainers such as FPT Securities Joint Stock Company (FTS) and Ho Chi Minh City Securities Corporation (HCM), Viet Capital Incorporation (VCI), SSI Securities Incorporation (SSI), Agribank Securities Corporation (AGR) and APG Securities Joint Stock Company (APG).
The 30 biggest stocks tracker, VN30-Index, lost 0.57 per cent to finish at 1,516.57 points.
Of the VN30 basket, 10 stocks increased while 17 decreased.
On a sector basis, 18 out of 25 sectors decreased, such as wholesale, seafood processing, real estate, agriculture, home appliance production, rubber production, information and technology, retail, healthcare, banking, construction materials.
On the other side, gainers were oil and gas, insurance, securities, food and beverage, and logistics.
Meanwhile, on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange (HNX), the HNX-Index lost 0.13 per cent to close at 411.27 points.
The northern market index had gained 0.39 per cent, to close Wednesday at 411.82 points.
During the session, over 51.7 million shares were traded on HNX, worth VND1.6 trillion. — VNS