The market inched down on Wednesday morning as selling pressure resurged, weighing on investor sentiment.
The VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE) dropped 13.62 points, or 0.91 per cent, to 1,485.16 points.
The market breadth turned negative with 341 stocks declining, while liquidity rose sharply with nearly VND19.1 trillion (US$835.3 million) worth of shares, equivalent to a trading volume of nearly 595.4 million shares, traded on HoSE.
The index's fall was mainly driven by losses in large-cap stocks, especially bank stocks. The VN30-Index, which tracks the 30 biggest stocks in market capitalisation, posted a loss of over 18 points, or 1.18 per cent, to 1,502.11 points.
Only nine stocks of the VN30 basket saw positive performance, while 19 slid and two ended flat.
The banking sector was hit hard by the selling force, with a series of big stocks reporting great losses. Of which Vietinbank (CTG) led the market downtrend this morning, down 3.45 per cent. It was followed by VPBank (VPB) with a fall of 2.78 per cent.
BIDV (BID), Techcombank (TCB), MBBank (MBB), Sacombank (STB), Asia Commercial Joint Stock Bank (ACB) and Vietnam International Commercial Joint Stock Bank (VIB) all posted losses of at least 1.2 per cent.
Other banks added downtrend pressure on the market in real estate sector, including the trio of stocks in the Vin family: Vingroup (VIC), Vinhomes (VHM) and Vincome Retail (VRE); and Becamex(BCM). These stocks decreased in a range of 1 - 2.24 per cent.
On the Ha Noi Stock Exchange (HNX), the HNX-Index also saw a fall of 1.95 points, or 0.44 per cent, to 441.61 points. VNS