Vietnamese shares struggled to climb over 900 points on Thursday morning, driven by the large-cap sector.

The benchmark VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange gained 0.84 per cent to 899.19 points.

The VN-Index advanced as much as 1.16 per cent during the day to take a grip on the 900 point level.

The benchmark had made a four-day rally of total 2.09 per cent prior to Thursday.

The large-cap stocks were the main driving factor of the southern bourse.

The blue-chip tracker VN30-Index was up 0.86 per cent to 839.15 points.

The large-cap growth had a positive impact on mid-cap and small-cap sectors, pulling the two indices up 0.05 per cent and 0.16 per cent, respectively.

In the VN30 basket, 21 of the 30 largest shares by market capitalisation and trading liquidity increased while four declined.

Among the gainers were Vincom Retail (VRE), PetroVietnam Power Corp (POW), brewer Sabeco (SAB), Vingroup (VIC), HDBank (HDB) and Vietcombank (VCB).

Those large-caps boosted the property, banking, utilities and consumer sectors between 0.3 per cent and 1.6 per cent.

On the Ha Noi Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index slid 0.30 per cent to 125.04 points.

The northern market index added 0.45 per cent on Tuesday.

More than 264.5 million shares were traded on the two exchanges, worth VND4.87 trillion (US$209.3 million).

The afternoon trading session starts at 1pm. — VNS