Vietnamese shares tumbled on Tuesday morning as selling pressure spread widely and brought down a majority of the stocks.

The benchmark VN Index on the HCM Stock Exchange dropped by 2.79 per cent or 29 points to end at 1,009.99 points. It had rallied 9.5 per cent in the previous eight sessions.

The HNX Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange fell by 2.64 per cent to close at 115.32 points. It had lost 1.17 per cent on Monday.

Nearly 163 million shares, worth VND3.93 trillion (US$174.6 million), were traded on the two local exchanges. The market breadth was on the negative side, with 95 gaining stocks against 322 decliners.

Large-cap stocks were strongly hit by selling pressure as the large-cap VN30 Index declined by 2.75 per cent to 996.68 points, with 29 of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation on the downtrend.

Across the stock market, 19 of the 20 sectors saw share prices go down, according to data on vietstock.vn.

Key industries such as banking and finance, real estate, energy and food and beverages were down between 1.2 per cent and 3.9 per cent.

The afternoon trading session starts at 1pm. — VNS