A worker collecting latex at a plantation of Vietnam Rubber Group. The company's shares lost nearly 6 per cent on Friday, adding pressure to the market's downtrend. —VNA/VNS Photo Vũ Sinh

HÀ NỘI — The market ended the week on a negative note, weighed by strong profit-taking pressure, with the VN-Index breaking below the 1,200 point-level.

The benchmark VN-Index on the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE) dipped 19.69 points, or 1.62 per cent, to 1,193.05 points. This is the biggest daily loss since March 20.

The index plunged nearly 13.4 points on Wednesday after recovering over 14.6 points in the previous session.

On the southern bourse, up to 292 stocks went down, while only 48 ticked up. Meanwhile, liquidity soared to more than VNĐ32 trillion, of which the trading value increased more than 40.3 per cent from the previous session to VNĐ32.3 trillion (US$1.32 billion). This was equal to a trading volume of nearly 1.4 billion shares.

The VN30-Index, which tracks the 30 biggest stocks on HoSE, fell 21.5 points, or 1.76 per cent, to 1,197.69 points. In the VN30 basket, 25 stocks went down, while only four ticker symbols performed well, and one finished unchanged.

According to Saigon - Hanoi Securities JSC (SHS), the market has approached the short-term resistance level of 1,250 points twice and is on track to form an accumulation foundation. Therefore, corrections are considered positive movements.

“The market will need more time to form a tight accumulation area. The psychological support threshold of the VN-Index is 1,200 points, and the next one is 1,170 points,” said SHS.

“In the mid-term, the uptrend will remain, but the market needs to accumulate more after the volatility to be able to break over the short-term resistance around 1,250 points and reach the next resistance level of 1,300 points.”

The real estate industry was the bearish trend’s leader today, with Vinhomes (VHM) posting the biggest loss of 4.38 per cent.

The other two property developers in the Vin-family, Vingroup (VIC) and Vincom Retail (VRE), also reported big falls of 4.21 per cent and 2.66 per cent, respectively.

Novaland (NVL), Đất Xanh Group (DXG), Development Investment Construction JSC (DIG), and KinhBac City Group (KBC) plunged at least 4.4 per cent, with DXG and DIG logging the maximum daily loss of 7 per cent.

Losses in banking, securities and manufacturing also contributed to the downtrend, such as Hoà Phát Group (HPG) tumbling 3.87 per cent, Vietnam Rubber Group (GVR) down 5.82 per cent, Masan Group (MSN) falling 4.3 per cent, SSI Securities Corporation (SSI) down 6.19 per cent, VNDirect Securities Corporation (VND) plummeted 7 per cent, and VPBank (VPB) lost 1.85 per cent.

On the Hà Nội Stock Exchange (HNX), the HNX-Index dropped by 8.72 points, or 3.46 per cent, to 243.15 points.

More than 177.4 million shares were traded on the northern exchange, worth nearly VNĐ3.4 trillion.

Foreign investors were still net sellers on the market as they net sold a value of VNĐ180.6 billion, but net bought a small value of VNĐ8.7 billion on HNX. — VNS