A steel mill of Hòa Phát Group. The business shares lost 2.9 per cent on Monday. — Photo courtesy of Hòa Phát Group JSC

HÀ NỘI — Việt Nam’s benchmark VN-Index failed to beat the 1,000 points again amid lack of supportive corporate news and large-cap stocks declining after strong gains last week.

The VN-Index on the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange fell 0.47 per cent to close Monday at 985.75 points.

The VN-Index gained total 0.32 per cent last week.

More than 207.5 million shares were traded on the southern bourse, worth VNĐ5.28 trillion (US$227.4 million).

The southern market was shadowed by negative sentiment as the three major indices classifying stocks by market capitalisation and trading liquidity dropped by 0.51-0.97 per cent.

The large-cap VN30-Index lost 0.57 per cent with 20 of the 30 largest stocks in the basket losing ground.

Among decliners were tech group FPT Corp (FPT), retailer Mobile World (MWG), Vietcombank (VCB), Techcombank (TCB) and steel producer Hòa Phát (HPG).

Technology, retail and banking were also the three worst performing sectors, whose indices were down between 1.3 per cent and 2.5 per cent, data on vietstock.vn showed.

Those large-cap stocks were the main driving factors for the market growth last week, for example, FPT, Mobile World and Techcombank shares increased between 2.2 per cent and 3.3 per cent in total.

According to Thành Công Securities Co (TCSC), investors were still cautious with the market conditions at the moment as they were willing to exit the market as soon as possible.

The Vietnamese stock market is currently in lack of supporting corporate news, which will make the VN-Index continue to swing up and down in the next trading days, TCSC said.

Among the few large-cap companies that saw shares increase on Monday, Vinamilk (VNM) was boosted by the Ministry of Finance’s statement to keep the most-favoured-nation (MFN) tariffs on imported milk products unchanged to support domestic dairy firms.

The US Dairy Export Council and the American Chamber of Commerce Vietnam (AmCham) has recently suggested Việt Nam cut tariffs on dairy imports to boost US exports to Việt Nam.

Vinamilk shares soared 2 per cent on Monday.

According to Ngô Quốc Hưng, senior analyst at MB Securities Co’s market strategy department, individual stocks with their own stories will be the centre of attention, especially because investors are not wealthy enough to make risky purchases.

The VN-Index may struggle between 980 and 985 points in the next few days and the sectors and stocks will be differentiated depending on the supportive news, TCSC forecast.

On the Hà Nội Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index rose 0.23 per cent to end at 104.38 points.

The northern market index last week advanced total 1.9 per cent on a weekly basis.

More than 31.3 million shares were traded on the northern bourse, worth VNĐ355 billion. — VNS