VN-Index suffers sharpest fall in nearly five months

Strong profit-taking pressure made Vietnam’s benchmark VN-Index lose 13.38 points, or 1.08%, to close at 1220.61 on Thursday, marking the sharpest fall since March 20.

Trading value on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE), represented by the index, dropped nearly 7% from the previous session to VND20.2 trillion ($850.6 million), with more than 1 billion shares changing hands. There were up to 371 losers and 118 gainers.

The VN-30 index, which tracks the performance of 30 largest cap stocks, lost 13.64 points to 1,226.2, with up to 24 tickers declining.

Consumption, finance, industry and raw materials were groups with the largest declines. The top 10 worst performers came from these groups, including BID of BIDV bank, VCB of Vietcombank, and MSN of Masan Group.

Real estate was the only bright spot in the session. NVL of Novaland recorded the largest trading value in the market with nearly VND1.3 trillion ($54.74 million). Its price increased by 3.5% to VND20,600 ($0.87) per share.

VIC of Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup surged 3.2% to VND67,900 ($2.96) per share with more than VND530 billion ($22.4 million) in matched value.

Foreign investors turned net sellers on the HoSE to the tune of VND340 billion ($14.3 million) after net buying VND328 billion ($13.8 million) in the previous session. They mainly net sold MSN and VPB of VPBank.

The HNX-Index at the Hanoi Stock Exchange went down 1.97 points to 243.91, while the UPCoM-Index at the Unlisted Public Companies Market dropped 0.7 points to 93.1.