Vietnamese shares fell on Thursday morning as investors looked to earn profits from recent rallies.

The benchmark VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange dropped 0.43 per cent to close at 978.30 points.

The index inched up 0.05 per cent on Wednesday.

More than 72.7 million shares were traded on the southern bourse, worth VND1.5 trillion (US$64.8 million).

Selling increased on Wednesday and weighed on some large-cap stocks as investors began taking profits from rallies.

This continued on Thursday morning and pulled the large-cap VN30-Index down 0.60 per cent to 874.44 points.

Twenty-five of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation ended the morning session on a negative note.

The decliners included Coteccons Construction (CTD), food and beverage firm Masan (MSN), DHG Pharmaceuticals (DHG), real estate firms Vinhomes (VHM) and Novaland (NVL), and VPBank (VPB).

Across the southern bourse, the worst-performing sectors were insurance-finance, stock brokerage, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, food and beverage, and construction, data on vietstock.vn showed.

Shares in those sectors had made strong increases in recent weeks on expectations for good quarterly earnings reports.

On the Ha Noi Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index lost 0.38 per cent to end at 106.17 points.

The northern market index had gained total 0.89 per cent in the previous two days.

More than 20 million shares were exchanged on the northern bourse, worth VND340 billion.

Afternoon trading starts at 1pm. – VNS