Lingering selling pressure continued to weigh on the market on Wednesday, however indices pared losses on gains of some pillar stocks.

On the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE), the market benchmark VN-Index fell for the second day in a row to 1,401.02 points, a decline of 7.67 points, or 0.73 per cent. It lost nearly 45 points in the previous session.

There were still more stocks clinging to the downside, of which 268 stocks on HoSE ended the trading day lower with 60 stocks hitting the biggest daily decrease of 7 per cent. Meanwhile, only 78 stocks edged higher.

Liquidity also posted a strong drop of more than 40 per cent in trading value over the last session to VND14 trillion (US$588.2 million), equivalent to a trading volume of nearly 920.94 million shares.

The VN30-Index also finished lower to 1,047.58 points, a decrease of 6.48 points, or 0.61 per cent.

Fifteen of the 30 biggest stocks in the VN30 basket slumped, of which one stock hit the floor price, while 12 stocks increased with one registering the maximum daily gain of 7 per cent. And three stocks ended flat.

From a positive perspective, analysts at the Saigon - Hanoi Stock Exchange (SHS) said that after Tuesday's correction, the market is likely to experience other fluctuations but soon return to the uptrend in the near future, heading to a resistance zone of 1,150 points.

"For short-term investors, the corrections are opportunities to buy shares," SHS added.

Banking and manufacturing stocks continued to face sell-offs and led the general downtrend. Specifically, Vietcombank was the worst performer yesterday, down 1.88 per cent.

It was followed by PV Gas (GAS), VPBank (VPB), Masan Group (MSN) and Novaland (NVL), down in a range of 1.96-7 per cent, with NVL posting the biggest intra-day loss of 7 per cent.

Losses in other big names like Techcombank (TCB), MBBank (MBB), Hoa Phat Group (HPG), Vietnam Rubber Group (GVR) and Becamex (BCM) also pressured investors' sentiment.

The index pared losses thanks to gains in some pillar stocks, led by property developer Vingroup (VIC). The company's shares rose 7 per cent yesterday.

The HNX-Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange (HNX) also extended the bearish trend, down 2.87 points, or 1.35 per cent, to 209.93 points.

During the session, more than 115 million shares were traded on the northern bourse, worth nearly VND1.6 trillion.

Foreign investors continued to be net buyers on two main exchanges. Of which they net bought a large amount of over VND1 trillion on HoSE and VND26.78 billion on HNX. — VNS