Vietnamese shares tumbled on Monday morning as large-cap firms continued to suffer from strong investor selling.

The benchmark VN Index on HCM Stock Exchange slipped by 2.57 per cent to close at 939.08 points. It had lost a total of 7.4 per cent last week.

The minor HN Index on Ha Noi Stock Exchange plunged by 3.88 per cent to end at 110.04 points. It had declined by 5.6 per cent in the previous week.

Large-cap stocks underperformed, dragging the markets down. The VN30 Index, which tracks the performance of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation, fell by nearly three per cent to 908.50 points.

Across the two stock exchanges, 19 of the 20 sectors saw share prices go down. The worst-performing industries included banking, energy, retail and brokerage.

The three industry indices dropped between 4.8 and 5.9 per cent, according to data on vietstock.vn.

Poor performance of large-cap stocks also had negative impacts on mid-cap and small-cap stocks.

The afternoon trading session starts at 1pm. - VNS