Vietnamese shares dropped on Tuesday morning as selling mounted to help investors realise their short-term profits.

The benchmark VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange fell 0.50 per cent to end at 702.86 points.

The HNX-Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange was down 0.85 per cent to close at 106.25 points.

The VN-Index and the HNX-Index increased by 1.04 per cent and 0.92 per cent on Monday.

Nearly 175.3 million shares were traded on the two exchanges, worth VND2.52 trillion (US$108 million).

The figure included 159.4 million shares being traded via matched orders, worth VND2.25 trillion.

Investors increased selling on Tuesday morning to earn profits from the market’s rallies.

Banking, mining and energy, retail, securities, healthcare and pharmaceuticals were the worst-performing sectors as the indices decreased by 1.1-2 per cent, according to vietstock.vn.

Selling tended to hit large-cap stocks, pulling the large-cap tracker VN30-Index down 0.77 per cent.

Twenty-four of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation and trading liquidity in the VN30 basket declined while five increased.

Declining large-caps included aviation firm Vietjet (VJC), petrol distributor Petrolimex (PLX), PetroVietnam Gas (GAS), lenders Vietcombank (VCB) and HDBank (HDB), and Coteccons Construction (CTD).

The afternoon trading session starts at 1pm. – VNS