Vietnamese shares extended losses for a second session on Wednesday as last-minute selling drove capital towards assets other than stocks, showing low investor confidence.

The benchmark VN Index on the HCM Stock Exchange lost 1.44 per cent to close at 968.91 points. It fell 0.76 per cent on Tuesday.

The HNX Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange dropped 1.13 per cent to end at 109.66 points, a two-day decline of 2.1 per cent.

More than 222 million shares were traded on the two local exchanges, worth VND6.55 trillion (US$291.2 million).

The figures were up 15.4 per cent in volume and 63 per cent in value from Tuesday.

Declining stocks dominated the market with total 225 stocks seeing prices fall, while 185 other stocks ended on a positive note.

According to Sai Gon-Ha Noi Securities Company (SHS), capital continued to leave the stock market and investors switched to the derivatives market for short-term profits.

Foreign investors would remain net sellers with net sell value of VND135 billion if their put-through transactions worth VND2.52 trillion for the freshly-listed media firm Yeah1 (YEG) were not counted, SHS said in its daily report.

“All of those factors proved investors have become bored and pessimistic and are questioning what would be the correct direction for the market at moment, especially when it is moving with high volatility and lower liquidity.”

Poor investor confidence continued to hit stocks on a large scale, led by large-cap ones after the VN30 Index fell 1.29 per cent to 961.29 points at the end of the session.

Twenty of the 30 largest stocks in the VN30 basket declined against only six gainers, indicating investors were trying to offload their portfolios.

Gainers among large-cap stocks included Saigon Securities Inc (SSI), Vietinbank (CTG), Bank for Investment and Development of Viet Nam (BID), Vietcombank (VCB) and MBBank (MBB).

Banking and brokerage sectors were the two worst-performing industries on Wednesday as their industry indices shed 2.6 per cent and 3.2 per cent, respectively, according to vietstock.vn.

“Selling pressure climbed in the last minutes, while bottom-fishing demand weakened and triggered the decline of large-cap stocks, sending negative signals to the overall market,” Bao Viet Securities Company (BVSC) said in a note.

“The VN Index could keep altering on Thursday and it would settle in the range of 950-1,000 points as it has moved in the last six sessions,” SHS forecast. — VNS