Individual investors and professional organisations faced many difficulties with the market's unfavourable movements in the first quarter.

The stock market has just closed the first quarter in which it saw strong fluctuations.

The new year started smoothly, with the VN-Index surpassing the 1,500 point level and reaching a historic peak of 1,534 points. But the impact of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the US Federal Reserve’s rate hike meant the market could not keep the upward momentum and fell to nearly 1,420 points.

At the end of the first quarter, the market benchmark stood at 1,492.15 points, a slight decrease of 0.41 per cent compared to the end of 2021.

Meanwhile, the VN30-Index, which tracks the 30 biggest stocks on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE), finished last quarter at 1,508.53 points, a decline of 1.77 per cent.

Individual investors and professional organisations faced many difficulties. Statistics of large funds in the market showed that most recorded negative growth during the period, and some even experienced worse performance than the general market.

Among the list, the duo of long-time foreign exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in Viet Nam - Vaneck Vectors Vietnam ETF (VNM ETF) and FTSE Vietnam ETF - had a poor performance in the first quarter, negative 9.55 per cent and negative 8.93 per cent, respectively.

Premia MSCI Vietnam ETF followed it with a performance of negative 7.88 per cent, followed by JPMorgan Vietnam Opportunities Fund (negative 4.63 per cent), and the Taiwan (China) Fubon FTSE Vietnam ETF (negative 3.85 per cent).

The foreign funds reported relatively poor performance in the first quarter due to their large Vingroup (VIC) and Vinamilk (VNM) holdings.

Meanwhile, foreign funds with more initiative, such as Pyn Elite Fund, LionGlobal Vietnam Fund, and Vietnam Equity Fund, witnessed better performance with a decrease of only 1.69 per cent, 0.57 per cent and 0.5 per cent, respectively, because their portfolio does not hold VIC or VNM stock.

ETF funds generally did not show good performance in the first quarter. Most had negative growth as with VN30 index funds, VN100, and VN50 index funds.

The fund with the best performance in the market during the period was the DCVFM VNDiamond ETF, with its portfolio growing by 7.5 per cent.

Since its establishment in 2020, DCVFM VNDiamond ETF is regularly at the top of the top growth indices. With a portfolio of blue-chip stocks that run out of foreign ownership ratios, such as FPT Corporation (FPT), Mobile World Investment Corporation (MWG), Phu Nhuan Jewelry JSC (PNJ) and MBBank (MBB), the fund outperformed other funds in the market. Currently, the portfolio size of DCVFM VNDiamond ETF is about VND15 trillion (US$656.6 million).

KIM Vietnam Growth Securities Master Investment Trust (KIM Vietnam Korea), with a scale of up to $693 million, also outperformed the market with its net asset value (NAV)/shares growth of 2.81 per cent in the first quarter.

The holding of a large proportion of stocks like Techcombank (TCB), MBB, MWG and FPT positively impacted the fund’s portfolio.

VEIL Dragon Capital, the largest foreign fund in Viet Nam, with a portfolio of $2.6 billion, also outperformed the market with a growth of 0.49 per cent.

In general, the unfavourable movements of the market in the first quarter of 2022 have caused most investment funds to perform poorly.

The difference among funds mainly comes from holding VIC and VNM. Meanwhile, funds holding many blue chips such as MWG, FPT, VPBank (VPB), PNJ and MBB had a more positive performance. — VNS