Cows at a Vinamilk Tây Ninh dairy farm. VNA/VNS Photo Lê Đức Hoảnh

HÀ NỘI — Selling pressure increased at the end of Monday’s session, affecting market sentiment and creating a big variation in large-cap prices.

The benchmark VN-Index on the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange slipped 0.03 per cent to close at 982.04 points.

More than 164.4 million shares were traded on the southern bourse, worth VNĐ4 trillion (US$174 million).

The large-cap VN30-Index was down 0.13 per cent to end at 879.62 points.

Sixteen of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation ended the session on a negative note.

The market opened the week cautiously, with large-cap prices differentiated widely, causing market indices to fluctuate.

Strong pressure came from some stocks like Vincom Retail (VRE), VPBank (VPB), Vinamilk (VNM) and Vietinbank (CTG). VNM dropped by 1.1 per cent, VRE lost 1.9 per cent, VPB decreased by 1.5 per cent and CTG moved down by 1 per cent.

On a sector basis, 12 of the 20 sectors saw share prices drop, including securities, oil and gas, construction material, wholesale, seafood processing and food and beverage.

The 16 industry indices were down between 0.14 and 2.3 per cent, data on vietstock.vn showed.

Oil-gas stocks fell across the board by 0.6 per cent, mostly driven by PetroVietnam Drilling & Well Services Corporation (PVD) (1.08 per cent), PetroVietnam Gas JSC (GAS) (0.5 per cent), PetroVietnam Technical Services Corporation (PVS) (0.4 per cent) and Drilling Mud Joint Stock Corporation (PVC) (1.32 per cent).

Securities stocks fell 2.19 per cent, dragged by Hồ Chí Minh City Securities Corporation (HCM), losing 3 per cent, VNDirect Securities Corporation (VND), dropping 2 per cent and SSI Securities Corporation, falling 2.2 per cent.

On the other side, the general market decline was partly narrowed by the support of some leading stocks such as Bank for Investment and Development (BID), Bảo Việt Holdings (BVH), Kido Group (KDC), Masan Group (MSN) and Vietjet Air (VJC).

KDC was strongly affected by second quarter business results. KDC rose 1.3 per cent to VNĐ19,000 per share. Pre-tax and post-tax profit in the second quarter rose sharply, up 81.5 per cent and 130.3 per cent, respectively.

VJC announced that it was approved by the Securities Commission to buy back a maximum of 25 million shares (equivalent to 4.61 per cent of charter capital). The transaction is carried out via order matching or put through the method on the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange from July 26 to August 23, 2019.

On the Hà Nội Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index lost 0.29 per cent to end at 106.76 points on Monday.

Nearly 31 million shares were exchanged on the northern bourse, worth VNĐ422 billion.

Nguyễn Việt Quang, director of Yuanta Vietnam Securities' Hà Nội branch, told financial news site ndh.vn that after the earnings season for Q2 passed by, the market would be short of supportive information. This might have certain impacts on investors and cause them to be cautious.

Nguyễn Hoàng Việt, head of market research department at VietinBank Securities Co said in the weeks to come, the VN-Index could easily surpass the 1,000-point mark during the earnings season when listed companies reveal their results for the April-June period and for the first half of 2019.

“But I doubt if the index can sustain at this point level in the context of strong profit-taking pressure and lack of supportive information,” Việt said. — VNS