Shares struggled on Thursday morning due to selling force dampening market sentiment thus sending large-caps down.

The VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange lost 0.16 per cent to close at 937.56 points.

It had declined 0.57 per cent to 939.03 points on Wednesday.

More than 200 million shares were traded on the southern bourse, worth VND3.8 trillion (US$163.6 million).

Market breadth was neutral with 251 decliners and 137 gainers.

The VN30-Index, which tracks the performance of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation and liquidity on HoSE, decreased 0.09 per cent to close Thursday morning at 905.24 points.

In the VN-30 basket, 19 stocks declined, 8 decreased and three remained flat.

Some blue-chips were hit during morning session, dampening investor sentiment, including Bank for Investment and Development of Viet Nam (BID), PetroVietnam Gas JSC (GAS), HDBank (HDB), Military Bank (MBB), Novaland (NVL), Viet Nam National Petroleum Group (PLX), Sabeco (SAB), Techcombank (TCB), Vietcombank (VCB), Vingroup (VIC), Vietjet (VJC) and Vinamilk (VNM).

The minor HNX-Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange increased 0.52 per cent to end Thursday morning at 140.71 points.

Nearly 28.4 million shares were traded on the northern exchange, worth VND415.8 billion. -- VNS