A bird's-eye view of the Vincom Centre Landmark 81, the tallest building in Viet Nam, built by giant property firm Vingroup (HoSE: VIC). Shares of Vingroup and other "Vin" companies rose strongly on Friday to boost the market. — VNA/VNS Photo Anh Tuấn

HÀ NỘI — Vietnamese shares posted slight gains on Friday, driven by large-cap real estate companies that are expecting good quarterly earnings reports.

The benchmark VN-Index on the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange inched up 0.24 per cent to close at 975.34 points.

The benchmark index hovered around Thursday’s closing level of 973.04 all day before being buoyed in the final minutes of trading.

The VN-Index increased by 1.32 per cent on Thursday. The index advanced a total of 2.67 per cent this week.

Trading liquidity dropped sharply on Friday compared to Thursday with nearly 138 million shares being traded, worth VNĐ3.4 trillion (US$147 million).

Property stocks supported the market as investors hope for positive quarterly earnings reports.

According to real estate consultancy firms, the Vietnamese real estate sector showed better performance in the first six months of the year.

“Vin” stocks led the uptrend. Vingroup (VIC), Vincom Retail (VRE) and Vinhomes (VHM) all rose by between 0.2 per cent and 2.9 per cent.

The three stocks contributed to the 0.06 per cent growth of the large-cap VN30-Index, which touched 880.23 points at the end of the day.

The VN30-Index tracks the movement of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation and trading liquidity.

Securities stocks also advanced. The stock brokerage sector index was up 0.5 per cent, data on vietstock.vn showed.

Among the gainers in the securities industry were FPT Securities (FTS), Viet Capital Securities (VCI), HCM City Securities (HCM) and SSI Securities Corp (SSI).

Other sectors that performed well included seafood processing, construction and building material production – which benefited from the strong gains of big real estate firms.

On the other hand, stocks in energy and petroleum, technology, rubber and plastic production, healthcare and pharmaceuticals declined.

According to MB Securities Co (MBS), global investors were waiting to see how US stocks would move after the US government released employment figures later in the day.

The numbers would have an impact on possible Fed interest rates cuts at its month-end meeting, MBS said in its daily report. Weaker job data might encourage the Fed to lower interest rates to drive growth it said.

A meeting between US and Chinese officials next week also weighed on market sentiment, MBS added.

On the Hà Nội Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index was up just 0.04 per cent to finish the week at 104.38 points.

The HNX-Index gained 0.9 per cent in total in the last three trading days.

The northern market index ended up 0.84 per cent higher than the end of the previous week.

More than 23.4 million shares were traded on the northern bourse, worth VNĐ287 billion. — VNS