Vietnamese shares retreated on Thursday morning, dragged by retail, technology and securities sectors.

The benchmark VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange lost 0.24 per cent to close at 992.06 points.

The VN-Index inched up 0.14 per cent on Wednesday.

More than 82 million shares were traded on the southern bourse, worth VND1.6 trillion (US$68.8 million).

Dragging the market down on Thursday morning were retail, technology and securities sectors.

The three sector indices fell between 0.5 per cent and 1.6 per cent, data on vietstock.vn showed.

Those were also the groups of stocks that had made strong gains in previous weeks as investors expected they would release good earnings reports for the last two quarters of the year.

Weak trading liquidity indicated investors were quite cautious during the third-quarter earnings season, VNDirect Securities Corp (VNDS) said in its Wednesday report.

Other groups such as banks, real estate, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, and construction either dropped or made modest gains.

On the Ha Noi Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index edged down 0.16 per cent to end at 105.77 points.

The northern market index had lost total 0.1 per cent in the previous two days.

More than 10.7 million shares were traded on the northern market, worth VND153.8 billion.

The afternoon trading session starts at 1pm. – VNS