Construction stock rally pushes up HCMC bourse index

The VN-Index, which represents the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE), increased 3.57 points, or 0.33%, to 1,070.64 on Monday, thanks to the rally of construction stocks.

The major bourse of Vietnam saw up to 263 gainers and 125 losers, with over 711 million shares changing hands for VND12.5 trillion ($533.23 million).

The VN30 index, which tracks the performance of 30 largest-cap stocks, gained 4.9 points to 1,073.74, with 16 codes rising and 10 declining.

Almost all tickers of construction firms rose sharply, with HBC of Hoa Binh Corp and LCG of Lizen Corp. hitting their ceiling prices. Other stocks in the group like C4G of CIENCO4, VNE of Vietnam Electricity Construction JSC, and VCG of Viglacera gained over 5%.

The gaining of construction stocks spread to other related groups like cement and steel.

Among real estate stocks, CII of Ho Chi Minh City Infrastructure Investment JSC, NBB of NBB Investment Corp., SCR of Saigon Thuong Tin Real Estate JSC, CEO of CEO Group, and NLG of Nam Long Group closed in green.

Banking stocks showed good performance, with TCB of Techcombank, VPB of VPBank, MBB of MBBank, TPB of TPBank, and STB of Sacombank increasing more than 1%. However, VCB of Vietcombank lost 1.2%.

Foreign investors were net sellers on the HoSE to the tune of over VND470 billion ($20 million). They mainly net sold VNM of Vinamilk, VND of VNDirect Securities, and HPG of steel maker Hoa Phat; while net buying VRE of Vincom Retail and VHM of Vinhomes.

The HNX-Index on the Hanoi bourse gained 1.99 points to 215.9, while the UpCOM-Index on the unlisted public company market rose 0.13 points to 81.21.