Vietnamese shares are expected to go up in August as investors look forward to listed companies’ earnings prospects in the remaining five months of the year, especially banks and financial firms.

The benchmark VN-Index on the HCM Stock Exchange gained 0.58 per cent to close last week at 935.52 points, totalling a two-day increase of 0.85 per cent.

The HNX Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange added 1.07 per cent to end Friday at 105.70 points. It has risen a total of 2.04 per cent in the last two sessions.

The increases of the last two days helped the VN-Index finish last week 0.23 per cent higher than the previous one, but the HNX Index fell 1.78 per cent on a weekly basis.

The VN-Index has fallen 2.63 per cent since the end of June, while the figure for the HNX Index is 0.44 per cent.

An average of more than 252 million shares, worth VND4.82 trillion, was traded in each session of last week.

Large-cap stocks remained among the most important factors to lift the market last week, however, attention was paid to speculative stocks following their positive second quarter earnings reports and business news.

Foreign investors continued net-selling a total VND423 billion worth of local stocks. They have totalled VND1.09 trillion worth of net sell value in the last two weeks.

According to Nguyen Trung Du, head of the brokerage division at VNDirect Securities Co, trading liquidity in July remained positive compared to June despite the last two-day slowdown.

“Large-cap stocks are consolidating and speculative ones are becoming more and more attractive to investors in the short term. However, to make a big breakthrough at the moment, large-cap stocks such as banks are required to perform much better,” Du told tinnhanhchungkhoan.vn.

The latest developments of both global and domestic markets might be good for Vietnamese shares to expand their recovery, he said.

The number of strongly-volatile sessions had declined, worries about exchange rates and trade wars had eased, and second quarter earnings reports created mixed performances among local stocks, Du said.

“The prospects of listed companies in the remaining months of the year will put their stocks at lower valuations. Thus, the stocks that have been consolidating like banks are expected to create the momentum to drive the market upwards and help the VN-Index reach the range of 980-1,000 points in August.”

Investor sentiment had improved after the benchmark VN-Index beat its resistance range of 925-930 points in the previous week, analyst Vu Minh Duc at Viet Capital Securities Co (VSC) said.

“The market is expected to increase slightly this week with moderate trading liquidity, indicating investors are still cautious with the market conditions,” said Duc.

Capital tended to flow into large-cap stocks that often released good earnings reports such as steel producer Hoa Phat (HPG), VPBank, Asia Commercial Bank (ACB), MBBank (MBB) and Phu Nhuan Jewellery JSC (PNJ), according to analyst Nguyen Huu Binh.

Among those, bank stocks would be the most attractive for their business results and positive prospects with room for improvement, plus their stocks were valued quite low at the moment, Binh said. – VNS