HÀ NỘI — Vietnamese shares sank on Monday morning as the trade war between the US and China appeared to reach a new low.

The benchmark VN-Index on the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange dropped 1.28 per cent to close at 979.76 points.

Nearly 99 million shares were traded on the southern bourse, worth VNĐ2.4 trillion (US$102.6 million).

US President Donald Trump announced on Friday that Washington would impose an additional 5 per cent tariff on Chinese goods, hours after Beijing announced its retaliatory tariffs on about $75 billion worth of US goods.

The escalating US-China trade war stoked worries about a global economic recession and this will drive the market sentiment down and result in negative responses among investors.

On a sector basis, dragging the southern market down were insurers, real estate, brokerage firms, mining, banking, agriculture businesses, logistics, seafood processing, construction and food and beverage companies.

Those sector indices were down between 0.51 per cent and 2.4 per cent, data on vietstock.vn showed.

The stock market also saw large-cap firms performing poorly on Friday morning.

The blue-chip VN30-Index lost 1.26 per cent to end at 889.18 points.

Among decliners were PetroVietnam Gas (GAS), dairy producer Vinamilk (VNM), Hòa Phát Group (HPG) and Techcombank (TCB).

On the Hà Nội Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index ended the morning session down 1.07 per cent to 102.15 points.

More than 16.6 million shares were traded on HNX, worth VNĐ452 billion.

The afternoon trading session starts at 1pm. — VNS