HÀ NỘI — Vietnamese shares almost fell to the defensive side on Monday as selling pressure rose in the final minutes of the session and pushed stocks down following recent rallies.

The benchmark VN-Index on the HCM Stock Exchange was up 0.01 point to close at 1,039.02 points, almost unchanged compared to Friday’s end of 1,039.01 points.

The VN-Index fell on last-minute selling pressure after it touched the 1,045-point level and made up the eighth rising sessions in a row with total growth of 10.2 per cent.

The HNX Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange fell 1.17 per cent to end at 118.45 points. The northern market index gained 0.73 per cent on Friday and total 3.5 per cent last week.

More than 220.6 million shares were traded on the two local exchanges, worth VNĐ8 trillion (US$357.4 million), down 1.2 per cent in volume and up 31.4 per cent in value compared to last week’s sessional average figures.

Despite the growth of the benchmark index, market trading condition was negative with 195 gaining stocks against 255 declining ones.

Across all 20 sectors, only five saw share prices increase including retail, information and technology, and food and beverage.

Meanwhile, shares in the other 14 sectors ended in negative territory including energy, banking, agriculture, and plastic and building material production.

According to Bảo Việt Securities Co (BVSC), the two weeks of surging increased profit-taking pressure on local stocks so they fell across the board while only a few large-cap stocks remained on uptrend towards the last minutes of the session.

Large-cap stocks were on the defensive side as the VN30 Index, representing the performance of the 30 largest companies by market capitalisation, inched down 0.10 per cent to 1,024.85 points with 18 losing stocks.

Those 18 losing stocks in the VN30 basket lost between 3.1 per cent and 0.3 per cent, including logistics firm Gemadept (GMD), petrol dealer Petrolimex (PLX), and four banks Sacombank (STB), Vietinbank (CTG), MBBank (MBB) and Bank for Investment and Development of Việt Nam (BID).

“The market moved sideways with alternate ups and downs in the session,” BVSC said. And though “liquidity slightly increased and remained at the 21-session average”, the market breadth was negative, indicating investors were cautious and waiting for clearer signals of the market trend, the firm said in its daily report.

Foreign investors remained as net sellers with VNĐ190 billion worth of net sell value made on Monday, which was triple the figure made on Friday.

Negative movement of the overall market may still be seen in the next sessions, BVSC added. It forecast the VN-Index may either drop to the range of 990-1,000 points in coming sessions. — VNS