An employee of Vietcombank performs transactions at its office in Vĩnh Phúc Province. The bank's shares led the downtrend yesterday with a loss of nearly 2.4 per cent. —VNA/VNS Photo

HÀ NỘI — The market finished lower on Wednesday as selling force got stronger in the afternoon session, weighing on stocks across all sectors.

On the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE), the VN-Index decreased more than 7.9 points, or 0.67 per cent, to 1,172.56 points.

The index opened Wednesday on a green note, bolstered by the recovery of the previous session. However, the bullish momentum was unable to extend to the afternoon trade.

The breadth of the market was negative with more stocks posting poor performances. In particular, 185 stocks on HoSE declined, while 133 stocks ticked higher.

However, liquidity fell sharply in both trading volume and value, of which the trading volume dropped 29.5 per cent over the previous session to 747.2 million shares, while the trading value plummeted 20.7 per cent to nearly VNĐ17.2 trillion (US$721.1 million).

The VN30-Index, tracking the 30 biggest stocks on the souther bourse, also posted a loss of 10.54 points, or 0.88 per cent, to 1,182.97 points.

Leading the downtrend today was Vietcombank (VCB). Shares of the lender plunged nearly 2.4 per cent to close the session at VNĐ86,300 a share.

Other bearish dominators were Vinhomes (VHM), Hoà Phát Group (HPG), VPBank (VPB), and Sacombank (STB). All the stocks declined by 1.7-4 per cent.

Many securities and real estate stocks also faced strong sell off on Wednesday, such as VNDirect Securities Corporation (VND) down 2.14 per cent, SSI Securities Corporation (SSI) fell 0.98 per cent, VIX Securities Joint Stock Company (VIX) slid 1.76 per cent, Saigon - Hanoi Securities JSC (SHS) down 2.44 per cent, Đất Xanh Group (DXG) down 1.05 per cent, and Vincom Retail (VRE) plunged by nearly 1.9 per cent.

On the contrary, some ticker symbols still performed well. PV Gas (GAS) was the biggest gainer with an increase of 1.6 per cent. It was followed by Vingroup (VIC) and Vinamilk (VNM), up 0.78 per cent and 1.1 per cent, respectively.

The strong gain of VinFast’s shares on the US market on August 22 helped boost the Vingroup’s stocks to the ceiling price in the morning session. However, momentum faded and outweighed by selling pressure, causing VIC to retreat near to its reference price at the end of the session.

On the northern bourse, the Hà Nội Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index also lost 1.58 points, or 0.66 per cent, to 238.07 points.

More than 71.5 million shares were traded on the market, worth nearly VNĐ1.3 trillion.

The market also weighed by the outflow of foreign capital as foreign investors were net sellers on HoSE. They net sold VNĐ556.36 billion on the southern exchange, but net bought VNĐ5.23 billion on HNX. — VNS