Banking and petroleum stocks help lift the market on Monday morning. — Photo tinnhanhchungkhoan.vn

Vietnamese shares gained at a slower pace on Monday morning, driven by financial-banking and petroleum companies.

The benchmark VN Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange inched up 0.3 per cent to close at 953.73 points.

The southern market index gained 4.64 per cent last week.

More than 96.4 million shares were traded on the southern bourse, worth nearly VND2 trillion (US$85.6 million).

Gainers among banks were the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BID), VPBank (VPB) and Vietcombank (VCB), which rose between 0.7 per cent and 0.8 per cent.

Petroleum stocks continued rising on the expansion of oil prices.

Gaining energy stocks included PetroVietnam Gas (GAS), PetroVietnam Drilling and Well Services (PVD) and PetroVietnam Power Corp (POW).

Other large-cap stocks also performed well, boosting the blue-chip VN30 Index up 0.26 per cent to 900.10 points.

Eighteen of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation in the VN30 basket advanced while 10 declined.

The HNX Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange rose 0.26 per cent to end at 106.39 points.

The northern market index gained nearly 2.7 per cent last week.

Nearly 21 million shares were traded on the northern bourse, worth VND280 billion.

The afternoon trading session starts at 1pm. – VNS