HÀ NỘI – Vietnamese shares ended Tuesday on a negative note as investors tried to take profit from the market’s previous strong gains made in the first trading session of the week.

The benchmark VN-Index on the HCM Stock Exchange inched down 0.17 per cent to close at 1,060.45 points. It stepped down after jumping 3.45 per cent on Monday.

The HNX Index on the Hà Nội Stock Exchange dropped nearly 1 per cent to end at 125.33 points, putting an end to its rally following a three-session increase of total 4.6 per cent.

More than 222 million shares were traded on the two local exchanges, worth VNĐ5.9 trillion (US$262.8 million). Trading figures were up 5.7 per cent in volume and 2.7 per cent in value compared to Monday.

Declining stocks outnumbered gaining stocks by 259 to 192 while 110 other stocks ended flat.

Across the 20 sectors on the stock market, 11 industries saw share prices drop, including energy firms, property developers, brokerages, banks and food and beverage producers.

Data on vietstock.vn showed that energy, securities and food and beverage industry indices were the worst-performing, losing between 1.5 per cent and 1.7 per cent.

Bank stocks, which played a crucial role to drive the market up on Monday, returned to the negative territory and the banking sector was led down by Sài Gòn-Hà Nội Bank (SHB), VPBank (VPB) and MBBank (MBB).

Among the few gainers were insurance companies, seafood processing firms and ICT businesses. Those sector indices gained 3.8 per cent, 0.9 per cent and 1.5 per cent, respectively.

Foreign investors remained net sellers, posting a net sell value of more than VNĐ176 billion on the stock exchanges. They recorded total VNĐ1.14 trillion in net sell value in the previous two sessions.

According to Bảo Việt Securities Co (BVSC), the VN-Index dropped in the last minutes as it was dragged by strong selling pressure after having stayed on an uptrend during most of the trading session.

Despite a slight improvement, liquidity remained low amid negative market breadth as “investors were still cautious and concerned about the market’s downtrend,” BVSC said in its daily report.

Therefore, the market could struggle to recover and may suffer strong pressure from the supply side on Wednesday if purchasing power was not going to meet selling power, the company added.

“Due to a lack of supportive information in this period, the market is likely to continue moving sideways on low liquidity with alternate ups and downs and a divergence among different groups of stocks in the next sessions.” – VNS