HÀ NỘI — Vietnamese shares plunged on December 11 as investors turned cautious before exchange-traded funds (ETFs) started restructuring their portfolios. A lack of information during the year-end period also had an impact on confidence.

The benchmark VN Index on the HCM Stock Exchange plummeted 2.42 per cent to close at 917.45 points.

Việt Nam’s benchmark index put an end to its nine-week rally last week by losing total 2.1 per cent.

The HNX Index on the Hà Nội Stock Exchange lost 1.78 per cent to end at 111.78 points. It declined by 0.63 per cent on Friday and edged down 1.4 per cent in total last week.

The stock market was dominated by declining stocks, which outnumbered gaining shares by 334 to 136 while 98 others ended flat.

More than 274.4 million shares were traded on both local exchanges, worth VNĐ5.66 trillion (US$251.5 million).

The trading figures were down about 1.1 per cent in both trading value and volume compared to last week’s daily average numbers.

Foreign investors closed on December 11 as net buyers, posting a total net buy value of VNĐ11.7 billion, which was a reverse from Friday’s net sell value of VNĐ528.7 billion.

The downfall of large-cap stocks, especially financial shares, was to blame for the market volatility on December 11.

The VN30 Index that tracks the movement of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation ended down 2.36 per cent to 908.29 points, with 25 of the 30 stocks in the basket declining.

Falling stocks included FLC Faros Construction (ROS), steel producer Hoa Sen Group (HSG) and brewer Sabeco (SAB).

On a sector basis, banking, securities and insurance industry indices performed the worst, dropping between 3.9 and 4.8 per cent, data on business-finance news site vietstock.vn showed.

The worst decliners among financial shares were Vietinbank (CTG), Sài Gòn-Hà Nội Bank (SHB), Vietcombank (VCB), Sacombank (STB), Sài Gòn-Hà Nội Securities (SHS), Saigon Securities Inc (SSI) and insurer Bảo Việt Holdings (BVH).

The large-caps and financial stocks mentioned above saw their values plunge at least 5 per cent. CTG suffered the most, hitting its daily decreasing limit of 7 per cent.

According to tinnhanhchungkhoan.vn, investors started the first trading day of the week on concerns over the arrest of some of Vietnam Oil and Gas Group’s former senior leaders last week.

Sài Gòn-Hà Nội Securities (SHS) said in a note that investors were quite cautious with the market status.

“They would prefer taking a stand-by position and observing the market to making risky decisions amid uncertainty before the portfolio restructuring period of ETFs and the year-end period,” the brokerage firm said.

“The benchmark index is forecast to continue falling on Tuesday [December 12] and the supportive range for the index would be between 907 and 913 points,” SHS noted. – VNS