After bargain hunting failed to lift the stock market last week, investors turned cautious on Monday and pushed Viet Nam’s benchmark VN-Index lower for the eighth straight session.

The VN-Index on the HCM Stock Exchange lost 1.33 per cent to end at 888.82 points, touching its 16-week low since hitting 889.40 points on July 5.

The southern market index had slumped total 7.28 per cent in the previous seven straight days, starting from October 18.

The HNX Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange edged down 0.61 per cent to close at 101.17 points.

The northern market index dropped total 5.83 per cent last week.

The major cause for the market’s loss was attributed to investors’ pessimistic sentiment, which has been badly affected by movements of the global markets, according to Bao Viet Securities JSC (BVSC).

Investors are scared of the market’s strong short-term downtrend and even good corporate earnings would not be enough to save it, BVSC said in a note last week.

Rising caution resulted in low trading liquidity on Monday.

More than 171 million shares were traded on the two local exchanges, worth VND3.63 trillion (US$161.3 million).

Foreign investors were net sellers with a net sell value of VND19 billion compared to Friday’s net buy value of VND39 billion.

Selling pressure increased shortly after bottom-fishing lifted local stocks to a certain level as investors feared they would be trapped in the market decline again like it did last week.

The market breadth was negative with 271 declining stocks, 170 gaining ones and 99 others ending flat.

Large-cap stocks were hit, pulling the large-cap VN30 Index down 0.75 per cent to 874.43 points.

Of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation in the VN30 basket, 19 declined while only seven advanced.

“The market could have fallen deeper today,” Sai Gon-Ha Noi Securities JSC (SHS) said in its note on Monday.

“We saw some bottom purchasing power when the VN-Index was near 885 points, which is a strong support level as it has been tested successfully five times since July,” SHS said.

“However, the 885-point level shouldn’t be reliable at the moment and it could be breached tomorrow if US stocks perform badly tonight,” SHS added.

Even good performance of US stocks on Monday (local time), which could boost Vietnamese stocks slightly on Tuesday, would not mean that the market’s short-term outlook is in a downtrend, SHS said. — VNS