Novaland's head office on Nguyễn Du, District 1, HCM City. NVL rose 2.4 per cent on Thursday. Photo courtesy of Novaland

HÀ NỘI — Shares extended gains for a third consecutive session on Thursday with the VN-Index hitting a record high, propped up by a slew of banking, securities and real estate stocks.

The market benchmark VN-Index on the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE) gained 0.80 per cent to end at a new high of 1,500.81 points.

The index had gained 1.72 per cent to end Wednesday at 1,488.87 points.

The market's breadth was positive with 266 stocks rising, while 189 slid.

Investors poured over VNĐ31.8 trillion (US$1.6 billion) into the southern exchange, equivalent to a trading volume of VNĐ1 billion shares.

The 30 biggest stocks tracker VN30-Index gained 0.46 per cent, to end at 1,572.46 points. Seventeen in the VN30 basket climbed, while 11 decreased.

In the VN-30 basket, the best performers were insurer Bảo Việt Holdings (BVH), rising 0.5 per cent, FPT Corporation (FPT), gaining 2.1 per cent, Hoà Phát Group (HPG) rising 1.2 per cent, and Việt Nam National Petroleum Group (PLX) climbing 1.8 per cent.

“Movements of stocks in the VN-30 basket showed strong selling pressure in the middle of the afternoon trading session, causing this index to fluctuate and drop to near level reference, before fortunately recovering in the last minutes of trading,” said financial news site vietstock.vn.

Blue-chips in the real estate group outperformed such as Phát Đạt Real Estate Group (PDR), soaring by 4.2 per cent, Novaland (NVL) increasing by 2.4 per cent, and The Việt Nam Rubber Group (GVR) rising by 1.6 per cent.

In the banking group, VPBank (VPB) closed 2 per cent higher. Vietcombank (VCB) gained strongly for the second consecutive session with an increase of 2.2 per cent.

Other bank stocks in the VN-30 group gained steadily such as Sacombank (STB) and Tiên Phong Bank (TPB). About half of banking stocks dropped but the decrease was not significant.

Twenty-four of 25 sector indices on the market gained ground, including IT, oil and gas, retail, seafood production, logistics, banking, securities, insurance, wholesale and healthcare, rubber production, agriculture, and construction materials.

The only losing sector was food and beverage.

On the Hà Nội Stock Exchange (HNX), the HNX-Index rose 0.90 per cent to end Thursday at 459.67 points.

The index had lost 1.56 per cent to end Wednesday at 455.58 points.

During the trading session, nearly 106.6 million shares were traded on HNX, worth nearly VND3.1 trillion. — VNS