Worries about the upcoming US-China trade talks later this week continued to cast a shadow over Vietnamese shares on Thursday. — Photo vnmedia.vn

HÀ NỘI – Việt Nam’s benchmark VN-Index fell for a sixth trading day in a row as caution and worries about the US-China trade talks continued to cast a shadow over the market.

The VN-Index on the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange lost 0.44 per cent to end at 947.01 points for a total six-day decline of 3.33 per cent since April 26.

Thursday marked the longest losing streak for the VN-Index since the beginning of the year.

Market sentiment continued to be weighed down by the escalation of trade tensions between the US and China.

China has warned it would have respond accordingly if the US government follows through with its plan to raise tariffs on US$200 billion worth of Chinese goods from 10 per cent to 25 per cent on Friday.

“The VN-Index is withstanding pressure from both domestic and international markets," MB Securities JSC (MBS) wrote in its daily report. "Foreign capital continued flowing out and investors are clearly worrying about a bad outcome at the Washington talks this week."

Foreign investors net-sold VNĐ96 billion on the HoSE, focusing on property firms Đất Xanh (DXG) and Vinhomes (VHM), Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BID) and PetroVietnam Gas (GAS).

On Wednesday, net foreign selling totalled VNĐ88.4 billion.

GAS and VHM were two of the 15 large-cap stocks in the VN30 basket – which tracks the performance of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation – that declined on the day.

Other losing blue-chips included IT firm FPT (FPT), Sacombank (STB), Military Bank (MBB), construction corporation Coteccons (CTD) and jewellery seller PNJ (PNJ).

“Investors are very cautious and ignorant towards the market now,” Sài Gòn-Hà Nội Securities JSC (SHS) said in its report.

Most investors are choosing to wait for stocks to get cheaper and bad news to fade before jumping in, SHS added.

Trading liquidity would have remained modest if there had not been extraordinary put-through trading of Vinhomes and Techcombank, worth a total of VNĐ3.24 trillion.

Without that figure, trading value on the HoSE was only VNĐ2.4 trillion on Thursday, which was much lower than the VNĐ3.27 trillion value seen on Wednesday.

The VN-Index has lost its level of 950 points and it may make investors force-sell stocks, MBS said.

“Investors are not confident that the stock market will rebound next week even if the US-China trade talk goes well this weekend,” MBS said.

On the Hà Nội Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index dropped 0.61 per cent to end at 105.26 points.

The northern market index had gained a total of 0.46 per cent in the previous two trading days.

More than 23.3 million shares were traded on the northern bourse, worth VNĐ251.7 billion.  VNS