A trading floor of the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE). Photo courtesy of HoSE

HÀ NỘI — To meet investors’ demand for odd-lot trading on the stock market, in recent years, the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE) has coordinated with FPT Information System to upgrade and test the market with odd-lot trading functions, according to the exchange.

After the testing period, all securities companies reported satisfactory results and committed to being ready for deployment.

On that basis, with the approval of the Ministry of Finance, the State Securities Commission, and the Vietnam Stock Exchange, HoSE will officially launch odd-lot trading on September 12.

Odd lot trading is applicable to stocks, closed-end fund certificates, exchange trade fund (ETF) certificates and warrants. Investors can place orders with volumes of 1-99 stocks.

Placing an odd-lot trading order through securities companies is similar to a round lot trading.

HoSE claimed that the implementation of odd-lot trading will make it easier for investors to be proactive with their bid and ask orders, such as easily selling the remaining odd-lot stocks in the account or buying additional odd-lot stocks to turn it into a round lot trading, reducing dependence on securities companies.

The exchange also suggests that investors equip themselves with knowledge of odd-lot trading regulations in order to facilitate effective odd-lot trading.

For example, investors are not allowed to trade odd-lot on the first trading day of newly listed securities; and odd-lot trading is completely separate from round lot trading, meaning that odd-lot trading orders can only be matched with each other and not matched with round lot orders. And investors are limited to make odd-lot orders.

In addition, the correction and cancellation of odd-lot orders follow the same rules as round lot trading, and the matching price of odd-lot trading is not used to calculate the indices. VNS