HÀ NỘI — Vietnamese shares advanced on Monday as large-cap firms were boosted by positive investor confidence that was looking for opportunities in the earnings season.

The benchmark VN-Index on the HCM Stock Exchange rose 1.27 per cent to close at 1,063.47 points. It gained total 3.7 per cent last week.

The minor HNX-Index on the Hà Nội Stock Exchange added 1.06 per cent to end at 122.03 points after posting a weekly growth of 1.5 per cent at the end of Friday.

More than 359.8 million shares were traded on the two local exchanges, worth VNĐ8.66 trillion (US$385.2 million).

These trading figures were down 11.3 per cent in volume and 6.5 per cent in value compared to the previous week’s average daily numbers.

Across the two local exchanges, there were 248 gaining stocks, 232 declining ones and 115 stocks ending flat.

Large-cap stocks performed well as the VN30 Index, which tracks the performance of the 30 largest shares by market capitalisation, advanced 1.21 per cent to 1,508.60 points with two-thirds of the 30 stocks advancing.

Gainers in the VN30 basket included insurer Bảo Việt Holdings (BVH), Vietcombank (VCB), property developer Novaland (NVL), and steel producers Hoa Sen (HSG) and Hòa Phát (HPG). Those stocks jumped at least 3 per cent each.

Among other large-caps that recorded strong growth were petrol dealer Petrolimex (PLX) and budget carrier Vietjet (VJC) after the two stocks were about to be included into the VN30 basket by the HCM Stock Exchange from January 22 to July 20, 2018.

The rubber industry also posted strong growth on Monday as the industry index surged 6.6 per cent, data on vietstock.vn showed. The industry was led by Đồng Phú Rubber JSC (DPR) and Phước Hòa Rubber JSC (PHR).

According to analysts, the market sentiment will be still dominated by investors’ expectations for good quarterly and yearly corporate earnings reports as well as firms’ forecasts for 2018.

Ngô Quốc Hưng, analyst at Vietinbank Securities Company told online newspaper VnEconomy that such expectations would keep driving the market up in the short-term.

Corporate earnings reports for the past quarter and the whole year were forecast to be higher than expected, Hưng said,,adding that earnings reports and business information were becoming more transparent to investors and investors had reacted positively to the market information.

Among the companies mentioned above, Vietinbank has estimated its pre-tax profit in 2017 would reach VNĐ9.2 trillion, while Đồng Phú Rubber JSC has reported its combined profit for the first 11 months of 2017 reached VNĐ244 billion, twice the 2016 number.

However, Sài Gòn-Hà Nội Securities Company said in its market daily report that selling pressure may get stronger in the next few sessions as the market trading condition was not quite positive enough given that there were many stocks suffering on the two local exchanges.

The brokerage firm forecast the VN-Index would encounter strong profit-taking pressure when it approached the range of 1,060-1,070 points on Tuesday. — VNS