HÀ NỘI — Vietnamese shares corrected on Tuesday following recent rallies as investors tried to offload more stocks in order to gain short-term profits.

The benchmark VN-Index on the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange fell 0.74 per cent to close at 987.06 points.

The southern market index had gained total 4.6 per cent in the previous six trading days.

More than 251.6 million shares were exchanged on the southern bourse, worth VNĐ5.17 trillion (US$222 million).

“The stock market officially entered its correction stage after having rallied in the last two trading weeks,” Sài Gòn-Hà Nội Securities Co (SHS) said in its daily report.

“As the VN-Index failed to conquer the 1,000-point milestone on Monday and the market had been overbought for nine straight days, investors were clearly cautious on Tuesday and they were only willing to buy in when the market fell deeper during the day.”

Current market condition suggests the VN-Index might fall deeper in the coming days and investors may limit their purchasing power, SHS forecast.

Market caution brought down leading sectors that had boosted the market in previous days such as banks, energy firms, consumer companies, property developers and insurance businesses.

Those sector indices fell between 0.6 per cent and 2.6 per cent, data on vietstock.vn showed.

Large-cap stocks were hit by strong selling pressure as the blue-chip VN30 Index was down 1.06 per cent to 929.51 points at the end of the day.

In the VN30 basket, 23 of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation retreated while only six increased.

The worst-performing stocks in the VN30 basket, also the worst-performing stocks in the five sectors mentioned above, included dairy producer Vinamilk (VNM), Military Bank (MBB), Eximbank (EIB), Masan (MSN), PetroVietnam Gas (GAS) and HDBank (HDB).

Despite the market decline, there was no panic across the trading board as investors were always willing to buy in stocks that returned to cheaper price levels, Thành Công Securities JSC (TCSC) said in a note.

The correction may be short-lived, or in a worse-case scenario, it would continue until the VN-Index fell back to 970 points, TCSC added. “We hope the correction will no longer exist in the next session.”

Meanwhile, SHS forecasts more selling pressure may bring fluctuations to the VN-Index between 955 points and 1,000 points.

On the Hà Nội Stock Exchange, the HNX Index on the Hà Nội Stock Exchange inched up 0.05 per cent to finish at 107.66 points.

The northern market index managed to end Tuesday in positive territory after having shed as much as 0.67 per cent during the day.

More than 69 million shares were traded on the northern bourse, worth VNĐ1.13 trillion. — VNS