The bear and bull status at the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange in HCM City. - Photo tinnhanhchungkhoan.vn

HÀ NỘI – Vietnamese shares were upbeat on Thursday as investors bet on the growth outlook of the banking-financial sector.

The benchmark VN-Index on the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange gained 0.70 per cent to end at 974.31 points.

The VN-Index has totalled a three-day increase of 0.87 per cent since Tuesday.

Financial-banking stocks drove the stock market on Thursday and the banking sector index rose 2.6 per cent, data on vietstock.vn showed.

Lifting the banking industry were Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BID) and Vietinbank (CTG).

The two banks’ shares surged 5.9 per cent and 5.5 per cent, respectively.

Other bank stocks also made good gains, including Techcombank (TCB), Military Bank (MBB), HDBank (HDB) and VPBank (VPB).

Brokerage firms also saw shares advance such as SSI Securities Corp (SSI), HCM City Securities Corp (HCM) and VNDirect Securities Corp (VND).

Strong cash flow into financial-banking stocks showed investors were highly optimistic about the sector’s future, Thành Công Securities Co (TCSC) said in a report.

The growth of financial-banking companies also aided other large-caps.

The large-cap VN30-Index was up 0.75 per cent to 891.96 points at the end of the day.

In the VN30 basket, 16 of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation and trading liquidity advanced.

Mid-cap and small-cap stocks were also pulled up by good market sentiment, which followed the signing of a trade agreement between the US and China the previous day, according to MB Securities Co (MBS).

Trading liquidity reached its highest level in four days, MBS reported. On Thursday, more than 201 million shares were traded, worth VNĐ4.74 trillion (US$204.8 million).

Despite the growth, overall trading breadth was negative with 174 declining stocks and 154 gaining stocks.

The stock market would likely keep growing with modest trading liquidity, which is typical ahead of Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday, MBS said.

Financial-banking stocks are expected to lead the market’s uptrend in the short term, TCSC added.

On the Hà Nội Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index rose 1.09 per cent to close at 104.32 points.

The northern market index was down 0.17 per cent on Wednesday.

More than 24.7 million shares were traded on the northern bourse, worth VNĐ307.5 billion. – VNS