HÀ NỘI – Vietnamese shares had a good start on Monday with two main stock indices rising, but low liquidity and constant net selling by foreign traders remained an obstacle for a stable uptrend.

On the HCM Stock Exchange, the VN-Index closed Monday up 2.12 per cent at 1,066.98 points after gaining 1.76 per cent last week.

On the Hà Nội Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index edged up 0.42 per cent to end Monday’s trade at 123.28 points. The northern market index inched up just 0.2 per cent in the previous week.

Large caps continued to be the market boost.

Twenty-five stocks in the VN30 basket (which tracks the top 30 shares by market value and liquidity on the HCM City’s exchange) advanced and only two declined.

Among gainers, private conglomerate VinGroup (VIC) and its retail arm Vincom Retail (VRE) were the leaders. VRE hit the daily limit rise of 7 per cent at VNĐ48,850 (US$2.14) per share, while VIC climbed 6.5 per cent to VNĐ132,000 ($5.79) apiece.

The information that Vingroup’s property arm Vinhomes will debut shares this week at the price of VNĐ114,700 a share is believed a positive factor that will help boost Vingroup’s shares.

At that price, Vinhomes is valued at $13-13.5 billion, becoming Việt Nam’ largest market capitalised company.

Liquidity remained low, however, indicating investors’ lingering caution.

A total of 191 million shares worth VNĐ4.94 trillion ($216.7 million) were traded in the two markets, down 9.5 per cent in volume and 13.5 per cent in value compared to last week’s average trading volume and value.

“Liquidity and foreign investors’ action are still the two main things that concern us. The market still need more time to begin rising.” said Quang Võ, an analyst at Viet Dragon Securities Joint Stock Company.

Foreign investors remained net sellers on the two stock markets on Monday but their net sell value decreased to VNĐ98 billion.

The foreign sector was responsible for total net sell value of over VNĐ1.2 trillion (excluding unexpected net buy worth of VNĐ1.16 trillion for 33.2 million shares of Việt Nam-Italy Steel on May 10).

According to Trần Đức Anh, a stock analyst at Bảo Việt Securities Co, due to a low volume of liquidity, the market’s trend every session was not really reliable. He predicted the market will likely move sideways with alternate ups and downs in the next sessions.

“The uptrend would be sustainable only with the confirmation of liquidity,” Anh wrote in Monday’s market report.

On the Unlisted Public Company Market (UPCoM) where many State-owned enterprises are listing, the UP-Index closed down over 0.5 per cent at 55.8 points. – VNS