The red colour covered the Vietnamese stock market in the week-beginning session, with 136 stocks on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE) hitting their floor prices.
Closing the Monday session, VN-Index, which tracks the HoSE’s performance, lost 21.96 points or 2.2% to 975.19, with 282 losers. Nearly 647 million shares changed hands for over VND10,555 billion ($424.4 million).
Large-cap stocks were the main actors dragging the benchmark down deeply. The VN30 basket, comprising 30 largest caps on the major bourse, saw 20 stocks declining, including eight hitting their floor prices.
Besides property stocks, banking stocks like HDB of HDBank and TCB of Techcombank and steel tickers like NKG và HSG of Nam Kim Steel JSC and Hoa Sen Group suffered the maximum decreases.
On the other side, VNM of Vinamilk was the most active ticker with an increase of nearly 3%, while GAS of PV GAS and SAB of brewer Sabeco gained more than 1%. Two bank stocks namely ACB of Asian Commercial Bank and VPB of VPBank also closed in the green.
In the mid-cap group, many real estate and construction stocks hit their floor prices, including DIG, CEO, NLG, DXG, KBC, HBC, CTD and C4G of DIG Corp, CEC Group, Nam Long Group, Dat Xanh Group, Kinhbac City Development Holding Corporation, Hoa Binh Construction Corporation, Coteccons Construction JSC and Cienco 4, respectively.
Other groups of retail, textiles and securities stocks also plunged amid negative investor sentiment.
Foreign investors turned net buyers to the tune of over VND526 billion ($21.1 million), mainly purchasing VNM, DGC of Duc Giang Chemicals Corporation and VND of VNDirect Securities.
The HNX-Index on the Hanoi bourse was down 6 points or 2.93% to 198.56, while the UpCOM-Index on the unlisted public company market dropped 2.01 points or 2.71% to 72.25.