Vietnamese shares were buoyed on Thursday as petroleum companies continued to benefit from rallying oil prices.— VNA/VNS Photo

HÀ NỘI — Vietnamese shares were buoyed on Thursday as petroleum companies continued to benefit from rallying oil prices.

The benchmark VN Index on the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange inched up 0.07 per cent to close at 908.79 points.

The HNX Index on the Hà Nội Stock Exchange gained 0.11 per cent to end at 102.78 points.

The two indices respectively increased by 0.18 per cent and 0.13 per cent on Wednesday.

The stock market was up and down on Thursday, and was buoyed in the last minutes by the growth of petroleum stocks.

The energy industry on Thursday was lifted by a rise in oil prices with its index going up 0.9 per cent, data on vietstock.vn showed.

US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Brent crude gained 0.2 per cent each to trade at $61.27 and $52.72 a barrel.

Oil prices have gained around 21.4 per cent since Christmas.

Among the Vietnamese petroleum stocks that made gains were PetroVietnam Drilling and Well Services (PVD) and PetroVietnam Technical Services (PVS).

The two petro stocks advanced 1.6 per cent and 1.1 per cent, respectively.

PVD and PVS have gained 12 per cent and 6.4 per cent since December 24.

Banks, consumer staple companies and agricultural firms were also active. The three industry indices added between 0.4 per cent and 0.8 per cent.

Among listed commercial banks, Vietinbank (CTG), Military Bank (MBB) and VPBank (VPB) were the best-performing stocks, rising at least 1.5 per cent.

Large-cap stocks performed well, boosting the VN30 Index up 0.44 per cent to 865.52 points with 16 of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation making gains.

On the opposite side, brokerage, technology, pharmaceuticals and healthcare, and rubber were among the sectors that weighed on the stock market.

More than 138.5 million shares were traded on the two exchanges, worth VNĐ3.05 trillion ($131.4 million).

“The market seems more quiet with very narrow movement and low trading liquidity, especially when Tết (Lunar New Year) is near,” Sài Gòn-Hà Nội Securities JSC (SHS) said in its daily report.

The decline in liquidity showed investors were waiting outside the market and observing only, Artex Securities Corp said.

The stock market would unlikely break from its current level if there was still a lack of supportive information and investors tried to sell stocks to prepare for the upcoming nine-day holiday, the company added. — VNS