Vietnamese shares traded marginally on Monday morning as expected with low liquidity ahead the of Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday.

The benchmark VN Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange inched up 0.23 per cent to close at 911.00 points.

The southern market index gained 0.73 per cent last week.

The HNX Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange dropped 0.31 per cent to end at 102.42 points.

The northern market index was up 1.16 per cent during the previous week.

More than 82.5 million shares were traded on the two local exchanges, worth VND1.18 trillion (US$51 million).

Petroleum and rubber companies were among the firms that supported the market on Monday morning.

The two industry indices respectively gained 1.7 per cent and 1.5 per cent, data on vietstock.vn showed.

PetroVietnam Drilling and Well Services (PVD), PetroVietnam Technical Services (PVS) and PetroVietnam Power Corp (POW) were the best three energy gainers with growth ranging from 1.9 per cent to 3.8 per cent.

Large-cap stocks also performed well with the blue chip VN30 Index up 0.22 per cent to 869.59 points.

Of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation in the VN30 basket, 15 increased including Coteccons (CTD), steel producer Hoa Sen (HSG), consumer staple Masan (MSN) and digital retailer Mobile World (MWG).

On the opposite side, securities firms and banks suffered from profit-taking.

Among those companies, Techcombank (TCB) dropped 0.9 per cent, VPBank (VPB) edged down 0.5 per cent, Viet Capital Securities (VCI) plunged 4.1 per cent, and Artex Securities Corp (ART) fell 4.3 per cent.

The afternoon trading session starts at 1pm. — VNS