Vietnamese shares advanced on Tuesday morning, driven by banking-financial companies.

The benchmark VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange gained 0.56 per cent to close at 977.98 points.

The VN-Index dropped 0.29 per cent on Monday.

Nearly 90.7 million shares were traded on the southern bourse, worth VND2 trillion (US$87.6 million).

Bank and insurance stocks were the driving factor of the stock market on Tuesday morning.

The two sector indices gained 1.7 per cent and 0.5 per cent, respectively, data on vietstock.vn showed.

Top gainers in the banking sector were Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BID), Vietcombank (VCB) and TPBank (TPB).

The three bank stocks increased between 1.5 per cent and 2.9 per cent.

Other sectors that advanced included retail (0.7 per cent), food and beverage (0.5 per cent), building materials (0.6 per cent) and plastics and chemicals (0.7 per cent).

The stock market is entering the earnings-report season, so investors are switching attention to the sectors they expect to produce good quarterly results.

On the Ha Noi Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index inched up 0.19 per cent to end at 105.81 points.

The HNX-Index fell 0.23 per cent on Monday.

More than 13 million shares were traded on the northern market, worth VND197 billion.

The afternoon trading session starts at 1pm. – VNS