Vietnamese shares had a dreary trading session on Friday with indices dragged down by the poor performance of large-cap companies.

The benchmark VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange lost 0.16 per cent to close at 993.35 points.

The index gained 0.66 per cent on Thursday.

The VN-Index failed to conquer 1,000 points again as selling pressure strengthened near that level and sent large-cap stocks down.

More than 152.4 million shares were traded on the northern bourse, worth VND4.2 trillion (US$180 million).

In the morning, the VN-Index struggled and surged to nearly 1,000 points thanks to the impressive breakthrough of banking blue-chips like Vietcombank (VCB), Bank for Investment and Development (BID) as well as Vinhomes (VHM).

Investors remained cautious ahead of the US central bank Federal Reserve’s meeting on how much rates will be cut on July 31.

But they were kept off guard on Thursday after the European Central Bank held interest rates steady contrary to predictions.

On a sector basis, 13 of the 20 sectors saw share prices drop, including real estate, securities, agriculture, food and beverage, construction, wholesale, retail and seafood process.

The 13 industry indices were down between 0.1 and 2.2 per cent, data on vietstock.vn showed.

Real estate stocks fell 0.74 per cent as Nova Land Investment Group Corporation (NVL), Phat Dat Real Estate Development Joint Stock Company CTCP (PDR) and Ha Do Group Joint Stock Company (HDG) respectively dropped by 0.3 per cent, 0.1 per cent, and 1.4 per cent.

The large-cap VN30-Index, which tracks the performance of the 30 largest stocks by market value and trading liquidity, slipped 0.29 per cent to end at 887.84 points.

Nineteen of the 30 large-cap stocks in the VN30 basket declined while six increased. Decliners included Refrigeration Electrical Engineering Corporation's (REE), brewery Sabeco (SAB), FLC Faros Construction Joint Stock Company (ROS), The European Investment Bank (EIB) and Mobile World Group (MWG). REE decreased 1.5 per cent, SAB fell 1.4 per cent, ROS lost 1.3 per cent, EIB and MWG dropped 1.1 per cent.

On the Ha Noi Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index dropped 0.34 per cent to end at 106.40 points.

The northern market index edged up 0.30 per cent on Thursday.

More than 35.5 million shares were traded on the northern bourse, worth VND356 trillion (US$81.7 million).

Foreign investors today bought a net of VND67.66 billion on the HOSE, focusing on Vietcombank (VCB) (VND37.14 billion), Vinhomes (VHM) (VND15.56 billion) and Vincom Retail (VRE) (VND15.21 billion). In addition, they sold a net of VND3.76 billion on the HNX. — VNS