VN-Index records strongest fall since early March

The VN-Index, which represents the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE), dropped 12.67 points, or 1.2%, to 1,040.13 on Tuesday, marking its strongest decline since the beginning of the month.

The main bourse saw up to 365 losers and only 56 gainers, with more than 621 million shares changing hands for over VND10.4 trillion ($440.96 million), a decrease of 7.7% from the previous session.

The VN30 index, which tracks the performance of the 30 largest-cap stocks, went down 12.72 points to 1,037.35, with up to 25 tickers falling.

Among the biggest losers in the VN30 basket were BID of BIDV bank, HPG of steel giant Hoa Phat, GVR of Vietnam Rubber Group, and VCB of Vietcombank.

Almost all groups closed in red, especially banking, fiannce, energy, materials and real estate.

The banking stocks, most affected by the collapse of the two U.S. banks namely Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, dropped around 0.5%.

The real estate tickers declined 0.5-1% despite the newly-issued government Resolution 33 on some measures to remove obstables for the property market. Investor sentiment is yet to improve as some experts forecast the realty market can only recover by the end of 2024.

The steel group experienced stronger falls, with HPG down 3.79%, HSG of Hoa Sen Group 4.01%, and NKG of Nam Kim 5.79%.

Foreign investors continued to be net purchasers for the sixth consecutive session to the tune of about VND410 billion ($17.4 million) on the HoSE, more than half of the previous session’s figure. They mainly net bought blue chips like VHM of Vinhomes, VNM of Vinamilk, HPG, MBB of MBBank, SSI of Saigon Securities.

The HNX-Index on the Hanoi bourse went down 3.3 points to 202.55, while the UpCOM-Index fell 0.61 points to 75.77 on the unlisted public company market.