Gas tanks produced at PV Gas South under PetroVietnam Gas JSC (GAS). GAS lost 3.4 per cent Monday. — Photo pvgas.com.vn

HÀ NỘI Vietnamese shares gave up initial gains on Monday as investors dumped stocks in the large-cap group, pushing down indices.

The market benchmark VN-Index on the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE) lost 0.16 per cent, to 1,350.48 points. The market's breadth was negative with 197 stocks increasing, while 234 stocks declined.

Investors poured over VNĐ24.5 trillion (US$1 billion) into the southern bourse, equivalent to a trading volume of nearly 894.6 million shares.

The VN30-Index, tracking the 30 biggest stocks in market capitalisation on HoSE, posted a gain of 0.21 per cent, to 1,458.66 points.

Of the VN30 basket, 13 stocks climbed, while 15 slid.

Banking stocks maintained their gains until the end of the afternoon trading session, strongly supporting the indices. The best performers in the group included Bank for Investment and Development (BID), Vietinbank (CTG) and Vietcombank (VCB), Military Bank (MBB), Techcombank (TCB), Sacombank (STB) and HDBank (HDB).

But some individual stocks in the large-cap group suffered losses, pushing the indices down, such as PetroVietnam Gas JSC (GAS) losing 3.4 per cent, The Việt Nam Rubber Group (GVR) falling 2.4 per cent, Industrial park (IP) developer Becamex IDC Corp losing 2.2 per cent and Masan Group (MSN) down 1.7 per cent.

On a sector basis, 21 out of 25 sector indices on the stock market lost ground, including wholesale, real estate, insurance, securities, information and technology, retail, healthcare, oil and gas, rubber production, food and beverage, seafood production, construction materials and logistics.

This week, if the uptrend continues, the index will have a chance to test the 1,360-1,380 point zone. In addition, trading volume needs to remain above the 20-day average for the uptrend to be more sustainable, said financial news site vietstock.vn

The barriers to the market uptrend were gradually passing, the data of the third quarter of earning results were also in line with the forecast of investors, it said.

If VN-Index has enough strength to continue to surpass the area of 1,355 points, the index can move to the area of 1,375 points and even to the area of 1,400 points after that, it said.

On Hà Nội Stock Exchange (HNX), the HNX-Index gained 0.25 per cent, to 358.87 points. 

More than 184.3 million shares were traded on the northern exchange, worth VNĐ3.7 trillion. VNS