An offshore jack-up PV Drilling I. The company's shares jumped nearly 3 per cent on Wednesday, lifting market sentiment. — Photo pvdrilling.com.vn

The Vietnamese stock market fell for the third day in a row, weighed by persistent strong profit-taking pressure. However, foreign investors were still net buyers on two main exchanges.

On the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE), the VN-Index dipped to 1,103.4 points, down 18.25 points, or 1.63 per cent. For the last three sessions, it had lost over 55 points.

Sell-off activities appeared continuously at the end of the session like in the previous session. However, bottom-fishing cash flow returned strongly to the market, improving the market’s liquidity and keeping the benchmark above the 1,100-point level.

Specifically, the trading value on HoSE jumped more than 60.7 per cent over the previous session to nearly VNĐ21.86 trillion (US$889.5 million), while the trading volume also increased 70.5 per cent to more than 1.03 billion shares.

The market’s breadth was negative with 293 losers and 43 winners.

The VN30-Index, tracking the 30 biggest stocks on HoSE, tumbled 15.47 points, or 1.36 per cent, to 1,125.56 points. In the VN30 basket, 25 stocks fell, two gained and three ended unchanged.

The HNX-Index on the Hà Nội Stock Exchange (HNX) also extended losses. It fell more than 2.9 points, or 1.27 per cent, to 227.11 points.

Investors poured over VNĐ2.6 trillion into the northern bourse, equivalent to a trading volume of 130.2 million shares.

In the top five stocks influencing the market’s downtrend, the lender BIDV (BID) posted the biggest loss of 3.15 per cent. It was followed by Vinhomes (VHM) down 2.7 per cent, PV Gas (GAS) down 2.58 per cent, Hoà Phát Group (HPG) decreasing 3.23 per cent and Masan Group (MSN) sliding 3.8 per cent.

In contrast, some stocks in the securities, transportation, manufacturing and oil and gas industries still performed positively on Wednesday.

Leading the bullish trend was Vietjet Aviation JSC (VJC), with a gain of 1.94 per cent. Other stocks like PV Drilling (PVD), VIX Securities JSC (VIX), Đức Giang Chemicals Group (DGC) and South Logistics JSC (STG) soared at least 3 per cent.

Also supporting the bullish sentiment, foreign investors continued to net buy on HoSE and HNX. Particularly, they net bought more than VNĐ553 billion on the southern bourse and VNĐ14.32 billion on HNX. — VNS