A woman walks past a screen showing stock prices. The VN-Index of the Hochiminh Stock Exchange falls 3.54 points, or 0.28%, today, May 11 – PHOTO: THANH HOA
HCMC – Strong selling pressure in the afternoon session drove the local stock market down steeply today, May 11, with the VN-Index of the Hochiminh Stock Exchange plunging to its lowest level of the day.
Before the plunge, the main index had beaten the record of 1,268.28 points, buoyed by a strong demand for blue-chip stocks. However, it failed to break the record in the end.
Some investors attributed the strong selling pressure today to the news that the State Bank of Vietnam asked commercial banks to tighten control over credit for some risky sectors, such as securities, real estate, consumer lending and BOT traffic infrastructure.
With 261 advancers and 164 decliners, the benchmark index lost 3.54 points, or 0.28% against the session earlier to reach 1,265.31 points at the close.
Trading volume and value on the southern market were over 770 million shares worth nearly VND22.7 trillion, respectively. Of the total, more than 60.55 million shares valued at some VND1.9 trillion were traded in block deals.
In the VN30 basket, only eight stocks advanced, with sugar maker SBT adding 5.8% at VND20,150, and seven others picking up some 1%.
As for liquidity, lender STB led the bourse with more than 58 million shares changing hands.
Construction firms ROS and HBC as well as agricultural material firm TSC hit their ceiling prices of VND6,580, VND12,600 and VND15,750, respectively, at the close.
Meanwhile, agricultural service provider ABS declined for the eighth straight session to VND42,200.
Developments on the Hanoi Stock Exchange were quite similar to those on the Hochiminh Stock Exchange as the HNX-Index also tumbled in the second half of the session and lost 0.5 points or 0.18% to end at 279.76 points.
There were 112.14 million shares worth VND2.3 trillion traded on the bourse.
Bank stock SHB was the most actively traded stock with 13.38 million shares traded.
Petroleum stocks PVS and PVC and apparel firm TNG rose but could not drive the index up.
