Vietnamese shares advanced on Monday morning, led by large-cap stocks in the banking and energy sectors.

The benchmark VN Index on the HCM Stock Exchange moved up by 0.60 per cent to close at 989.07 points. It rose by 1.42 per cent on Friday.

The HNX Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange increased by 0.29 per cent to end at 112.31 points, extending its growth from a 1.65 per cent increase in the previous session.

Some VND2.2 trillion (US$97.6 million) worth of more than 101.4 million shares was traded on the two local exchanges, with 192 gaining stocks against 177 decliners, indicating low investor sentiment due to a volatile market.

Large-cap stocks played the main role to boost the market as the large-cap VN30 Index gained 0.73 per cent to reach 980.19 points with 22 of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation in the basket advancing.

The gainers included large stocks in the banking and energy sectors, such as Bank for Investment and Development of Viet Nam (BID), petrol operator Petrolimex (PLX), Vietinbank (CTG) and PetroVietnam Gas (GAS).

Cash flow also switched attention from large-cap to mid-cap and small-cap shares as six of the seven top-trading stocks on the market are mid-cap and small-cap stocks.

The two most active stocks on Monday morning were property developers FLC Group (FLC) and Hoang Quan Consulting-Trading-Service Real Estate Corp (HQC), with 5.6 million and 5.2 million shares of their total being exchanged, respectively.

The afternoon trading session starts at 1pm. – VNS