Tiếng Việt
普通话
Stocks in the Vingroup family weighed on the market, with VIC shedding 3.2% at VND104,500 and retailer VRE falling 2.7% at VND30,550. SAB, a beverage company, also slumped 4.3% at VND178,000.
Lender STB was the most actively traded stock on the HCMC market with matching volume of 8.5 million shares. However, it slid 0.9% at VND11,550.
Among speculative stocks, construction firm ROS tumbled to the floor price for the third straight session, standing at VND7,970 on volume of nearly 6.7 million shares. Other small stocks bucked the trend to shoot up to the ceiling prices, including mining firm AMD and real estate company HAR.
Poor market sentiment among local stocks surprised analysts because regional markets, especially Chinese stocks, advanced on hopes of stimulus packages, according to VNDirect Securities Corporation.
The market was losing momentum as large-cap shares were weakening. The VN-Index would continue struggling which has been going on since the beginning of February, the firm said.
Vietnam’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the first quarter of 2020 is likely to decrease by 0.5 to 0.7 percentage point. Stimulation programs and interest rate cuts are necessary but the cash flow pouring into the market will certainly be affected.
“The stock market will continue to face difficulties in the first half of 2020 and is forecast to move sideways mainly in the area from 940 to 980 points. Opportunities will only come from well-performing individual stocks,” it said.
According to SSI Securities Corporation’s research unit, without the appearance of the novel coronavirus, which is now called Covid-19, the global stock market would have prospered thanks to the United States-China agreement on a Phase 1 trade deal and foreign capital flows.
“Until mid-January this year, fund managers around the world still remained optimistic with the proportion of stock investment in portfolios reaching 17-month highs. Capital flows into emerging markets continued to increase and so did the net buying momentum of foreign investors in the Vietnamese stock market,” said SSI Research.
However, global capital streams began to reverse in late January. Worries over Covid-19 virus drastically reduced the growth forecast for East Asian countries, forcing fund managers to change their investment strategies.
Emerging markets in Asia have seen a drop in the cash flow due to the high level of production and consumption connectivity with China. The value of capital withdrawals from equity funds in these markets, including Vietnam, in the first week of February rose to a 19-week high.
On the Hanoi Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index added 0.51 point, or 0.46%, at 110.07, buoyed by a rising demand for pillar stocks. Notably, bank stock ACB saw 14.6 million shares traded in block deals with the total value of VND424.6 billion, rising 0.7% at VND26,600.