VN-Index surpasses 1,100-point mark in lunar year-end session

The VN-Index, which represents the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE), rose above the 1,100-point mark in the last session of the lunar year 2022 thanks to investors’ strong purchase in anticipation of an uptick after the country's biggest holiday.

The Lunar New Year holiday (Tet) will last seven days, from January 20 to January 26, 2023.

Closing the Thursday session, the benchmark index increased 9.8 points, or 0.89%, to 1,108.08, with over 617 million shares traded for more than VND11.7 trillion ($499 million), an increase of VND1.2 trillion against the previous session. The major bourse saw 294 gainers and 119 losers.

The biggest contributors to the VN-Index gain were large-cap banking tickers, including VCB of Vietcombank, BID of BIDV bank, ACB of Asia Commercial Bank, and CTG of Vietinbank. Among these, VCB had the most impact as it expanded 3.3%.

The rally of banking stocks was supported by the industry's outstanding business results in the fourth quarter of 2022, said an analyst from DongA Securities.

Green also overwhelmed many other groups like securities, oil and gas, fertilizer, seaport and aviation.

Meanwhile, the steel and real estate groups saw a strong divergence when the numbers of stocks gaining and losing were nearly equal.

Large-cap stocks like VHM of Vinhomes, NVL of Novaland, PDR of Phat Dat Real Estate, and HPG of steel market Hoa Phat all closed below their reference levels, while small- and mid-caps like DXS of Dat Xanh Real Estate Services JSC, QCG of Quoc Cuong Gia Lai JSC, LDG of LDG Group, SCR of Saigon Thuong Tin Real Estate JSC, and NKG of Nam Kim Steel Corp gained.

Foreign investors continued to be net buyers to the tune of nearly VND800 billion ($34 million) on the HoSE. They mainly net purchased finance-banking stocks like SSI of Saigon Securities, VND of VNDirect Securities, CTG, VCB and STB of Sacombank.

The HNX-Index on the Hanoi bourse gained 2.14 points to 217.73, while the UpCOM-Index on the unlisted public company market expanded 0.44 points to 73.98.