Vietnamese shares closed Friday on a positive note as investors started buying in when exchange-traded funds (ETFs) offloaded stocks during their portfolio reviews.

The benchmark VN-Index on the HCM Stock Exchange inched up 0.08 per cent to end at 1,016.51 points and recovered from a 1.44 per cent drop made on Thursday.

The HNX Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange gained 0.86 per cent to finish at 115.90 points, covering half of its 1.5 per cent loss made in the previous session.

The VN-Index and the HNX Index recorded a weekly loss of 2.16 per cent and 3.3 per cent, respectively.

More than 210.4 million shares were traded on the two local exchanges, worth VND6 trillion (US$266.8 million), up 1.8 per cent in volume and 17.3 per cent in value day-on-day.

Foreign investors posted VND591.4 billion in net sell value on Friday. They net-sold VND660 billion worth of local stocks on Thursday, targeting property developer Vingroup (VIC), and steel producers Hoa Phat (HPG) and Hoa Sen (HSG).

The stock market recorded a large volume of purchase-in transactions to counter foreign selling during the At-the-Close (ATC) period, especially when the VN-Index fell off the 1,000-point level.

Strong buy-in boosted the large-cap VN30 Index to end up 0.07 per cent at 1,005.04 points with 18 of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation in the basket advancing.

Gainers included financial-banking stocks MBBank (MBB), Saigon Securities Inc (SSI), Bank for Investment and Development of Viet Nam (BID), Vietcombank (VCB), PetroVietnam Gas (GAS) and petrol dealer Petrolimex (PLX).

Twelve of the 20 sectors saw share prices increase, such as banking, securities, construction and energy. The twelve sector indices were up between 0.2 per cent and 1.8 per cent, data on vietstock.vn showed.

According to Viet Dragon Securities Co (VDSC), there was a dull and sleepy atmosphere on Friday morning when investors “seemed to stand aside until the ETFs finished their trading.”

Despite the market recovery in the last minutes, liquidity was still very low and capital movement was quiet, VDSC said in its daily report.

The market had suffered from strong selling for four consecutive sessions this week, proving the market sentiment was weak and the downtrend could remain intact, the company said. — VNS