Vietnamese shares tumbled again on Monday morning as blue chips were hit by a sell-off as worries of a coronavirus-hit economy took off on a higher number of infection cases.

The benchmark VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange plunged 5.30 per cent to end at 659.17 points.

The VN-Index lost a total of 1.92 per cent last week.

The HNX-Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange fell 4.66 per cent to close at 92.82 points.

The northern market index dropped a total of 4.36 per cent in the previous week.

More than 166.5 million shares were traded on the two exchanges, worth VND1.95 trillion (US$83 million).

They included 136.7 million shares traded in order-matching transactions, worth nearly VND1.5 trillion.

A large-scale selloff hit large-cap stocks as investors worried about the slowdown of the economy amid the coronavirus spread.

As of Monday morning, total infection cases in Viet Nam reached 194. Some locations have been locked down to deal with the infected people.

The large-cap tracker VN30-Index on Monday morning dipped 5.33 per cent with all 30 largest stocks by market value and trading liquidity falling.

Among the worst decliners in the VN30 basket were retailer Mobile World Investment (MWG), property firms Vingroup (VIC), Vinhomes (VHM) and Vincom Retail (VRE), jewellery firm PNJ (PNJ), FLC Faros Construction (ROS) and VPBank (VPB).

Those blue-chip shares plummeted 6.9-7.0 per cent.

The afternoon trading session starts at 1pm. – VNS