Photo shows the entrance of Times City, the urban area built by real estate, retail and tech conglomerate Vingroup (VIC). VIC lost 2.14 per cent on Friday. — Photo cafeland.vn

HÀ NỘI — Banking stocks weighed on the VN-Index on Friday, as the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange lost 0.08 per cent to end at 937.45 points.

During the session, the VN-Index surpassed 940 points, but the cash flow was not strong enough to maintain the rally.

The index rose 0.06 per cent to close Thursday at 938.24 points.

“The VN-Index is forecast to fluctuate early next week before a large upward trend towards the end of the week,” said Bảo Việt Securities Co (BVSC) in its daily report.

“The VN-Index will continue to settle between the support zone of 930-932 points and resistance zone 940-943 points. However, we expect the market will penetrate this trading range, heading towards 960-970 points in the short term,” BVSC said.

More than 204.3 million shares were traded on the southern bourse on Friday, valued at VNĐ4 trillion (US$180.6 million).

Market breadth was negative as decliners outnumbered gainers by 177 to 160.

Thirteen out of 25 sectors on the market lost momentum.

Retail, wholesale, real estate, insurance, food and beverage, seafood production and oil and gas were among the declining sectors.

Their indices declined between 0.17 per cent and 1.77 per cent, according to vietstock.vn.

Gaining sectors included securities, information and technology, agriculture, healthcare, construction and logistics.

On Friday, blue chips like insurer Bảo Việt Holdings (BVH), Masan Group (MSN), Vingroup (VIC), dairy firm Vinamilk (VNM), brewery Sabeco (SAB), Vietjet Air (VJC), PVPower (POW), Bank for Investment and Development (BID), Novaland (NVL), HDBank (HDB) and Vietinbank (CTG) all dropped and weighed on the market.

On the other side, banking stocks like Sacombank (STB), VPBank (VPB), Techcombank (TCB), Military Bank (MBB) and some individual blue chips, such as FPT Corporation (FPT), PetroVietnam Gas JSC (GAS) and Vinhomes (VHM) increased and supported the indices.

The VN30-Index, which tracks the performance of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation and liquidity on HoSE, grew by 0.20 per cent to end Friday at 865.86 points.

On the Hà Nội Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index climbed 1.43 to end Friday's session at 109.74 points.

The northern index had dropped 0.30 to end Thursday's session at 108.19 points.

More than 35.1 million shares were traded on the northern bourse for VNĐ469.5 billion.

Foreign investors net sold VNĐ89.97 billion on HoSE, including Masan Group (MSN) (VNĐ19.54 billion), Hòa Phát Group (HPG) (VNĐ15.85 billion) and Novaland (NVL) (VNĐ10.86 billion). They were net buyers on the HNX with a value of VNĐ3.90 billion. — VNS