Spreaders of fake news rocking Vietnam stock market face strict punishment: regulator

Anyone who spreads false information that negatively affects investor sentiment in the Vietnamese stock market will be strictly punished, the State Securities Commission (SSC), the country's market watchdog, has warned.

The warning was issued after Vietnam's benchmark VN-Index on Thursday experienced its sharpest fall since August 18.

The index, representing the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE), lost 46.21 points, or 4.19%, to close at 1,055.45. As many as 505 stocks on the bourse, or 90% of the total, fell, with 114 hitting their floor prices. Trading value on the major bourse skyrocketed to over VND23.2 trillion ($942.9 million), twice the previous session’s figure and the highest in the past month.

The stock market had been maintaining stable operations of late, demonstrated by improved liquidity as well as continuously increasing number of new investor accounts, an SSC representative told the local press, advising investors to take a comprehensive view and assessment of the macro economy, access official information and be careful with rumors.

The SSC representative noted that market developments are influenced by many domestic and world macro factors such as inflation, tight monetary policy in many countries, and exchange rate pressures. Many large economies, including important trading partners of Vietnam, have slowed down, affecting import and export activities.

However, Vietnam's government and localities have made great efforts to remove difficulties for businesses and people, promote economic growth, improve the investment environment and lower interest rates to aid production and business activities, the representative stressed.

The domestic stock market, therefore, is still expected to maintain positive liquidity, as well as be an attractive investment channel for domestic and foreign investors, he said.

The stock market’s liquidity had improved significantly in the second and third quarters of 2023 at an average of VND21.2 trillion ($862.75 million) per session in July, VND25.7 trillion VND ($1.05 billion) in August and VND25.3 trillion ($1.03 billion) in September.

The number of investor accounts has been increasing continuously, showing the attractiveness of the market. In the first nine months, investors opened 926,200 new accounts, bringing the total number to more than 7.8 million at the end of September, an increase of 13.4% compared to the end of 2022.

Explaining Thursday’s VN-Index plunge, leading fund manager Dragon Capital said that the strong selling pressure came from information that Vietnam’s largest private conglomerate Vingoup was selling international bonds worth $250 million which investors could exchange for Vinhomes shares owned by Vingroup. This sent all three tickers of the Vingroup ecosystem – VIC of Vingroup, VHM of Vinhomes and VRE of Vincom Retail – plunging to their floor prices.

Another piece of information leading to the massive selloffs was a bond default event: Country Garden, the biggest real estate developer in China, had announced its failure to pay interest on a batch of international bonds as the grace period ended October 17.