Blue chips drag down VN-Index

The VN-Index, which represents the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE), lost 4.79 points, or 0.45%, to 1,065.85 on Tuesday amid strong selling pressure on blue chips.

Up to 24 tickers in the VN30 basket closed in red, pushing their VN30 index down 5.69 points to 1,068.05. Among the losers, MSN of Masan Group suffered the sharpest decline, 2.2%.

The major bourse of Vietnam saw up to 266 losers, nearly double the number of gainers, with nearly 722 million shares changing hands for over VND12.8 trillion ($545.4 million), an increase of VND300 billion from the previous session.

Cash flows largely ran into banking, securities and industry groups. VND of VNDirect Securities topped in trading value with VND750 billion ($31.95 million).

Banking stocks showed negative performance as most of them were in red. Of which, BID of BIDV dropped 1.24%, VIB of Vietnam International Bank 1.39%, LPB of LienVietPostBank 1.06%, and OCB of Oriental Commercial Bank 1.16%.

Red also covered other groups such as real estate, manufacturing and aviation. Meanwhile, divergence was seen in securities, energy and retail stocks.

DBC of Dabaco Group made an impressive performance, gaining 5.21%. The ticker expanded 30% after 14 trading sessions.

Foreign investors were net sellers on the HoSE to the tune of over VND605 billion ($25.76 million). They mainly net sold VNM of Vinamilk, MSN and VND; while net buying POW of PV Power, VRE of Vincom Retail, and VIC of Vingroup.

The HNX-Index on the Hanoi bourse went down 0.11 points to 215.79, while the UpCOM-Index on the unlisted public company market fell 0.21 points to 81.