Vietnamese shares declined on Thursday morning on increased selling pressure as investors wanted to earn profits from stocks’ recent rallies. - Photo tinnhanhchungkhoan.vn

Vietnamese shares fell on Thursday morning on enhanced selling pressure from investors that were eager to earn profits from the market rallies.

The benchmark VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange dropped 0.46 per cent to close at 985.68 points.

The southern market index gained 0.33 per cent on Wednesday.

More than 98 million shares were traded on the southern bourse, worth VND2.14 trillion (US$91.7 million).

Profit-taking pressured all sectors on the stock market and brought stocks down from their rallies.

The worst-performing sectors included financial-banking, retail, consumer staples and property development with declining rates ranging from 0.3 per cent to 0.8 per cent, data on vietstock.vn showed.

Large-cap stocks also performed badly as the blue chip VN30 Index lost 0.74 per cent to 923.70 points at the end of the morning session.

In the VN30 basket, 24 of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation decreased while only three advanced.

Losing large-caps included real estate firms Vincom Retail (VRE), Vinhomes (VHM), Eximbank (EIB), new-age carrier Vietjet (VJC), consumer firm Masan (MSN) and VPBank (VPB).

On the Ha Noi Stock Exchange, the HNX Index was down 0.25 per cent to end at 107.37 points.

The northern market index ended slightly down by 0.03 per cent on Wednesday.

More than 28 million shares were traded on the northern bourse, worth VND238.3 billion.

The afternoon trading session starts at 1pm. – VNS