Photo shows a skyscraper built by conglomerate Vingroup in the centre of HCM City. — Photo courtesy of Vingroup

HÀ NỘI — The Vietnamese stock market maintained its uptrend on Wednesday afternoon as large-caps’ rallies continued.

The benchmark VN-Index on the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange had its best daily increase since March 25, gaining 2.41 per cent to end at 782.59 points.

The index has increased by a total of 2.64 per cent in the last two trading days.

The HNX-Index on the Hà Nội Stock Exchange was up 1.18 per cent to close at 106.66 points, rebounding from a two-day decline of 1.34 per cent.

A total of nearly 325.3 million shares were traded on the two exchanges, worth nearly VNĐ6.8 trillion (US$290.6 million).

Trading liquidity increased sharply from Tuesday's figures, which were 241.6 million shares exchanged worth VNĐ3.68 trillion.

Strong purchasing power for large-cap stocks kept up in the afternoon trading session, boosting the large-cap tracker VN30-Index by 2.1 per cent to 725.94 points.

Twenty-eight of the 30 largest stocks by market value and trading liquidity in the large-cap basket advanced while only one declined.

Among the best gainers were Coteccons Construction (CTD), 'Vin' companies – Vingroup (VIC), Vinhomes (VHM) and Vincom Retail (VRE) – PetroVietnam Gas (GAS), brewer Sabeco (SAB), tech group FPT (FPT), insurer Bảo Việt (BVH) and petrol firm Petrolimex (PLX).

By sector, the retail, securities, real estate, insurance, technology and energy had the highest growth. Those sector indices rose between 2 per cent and 3.4 per cent, according to vietstock.vn.

Key industries such as banking, food and beverage, building materials and utilities also advanced.

Market sentiment clearly improved but investors were still cautious as the VN-Index has entered the resistance zone of 780-800 points, Sài Gòn-Hà Nội Securities Co (SHS) said in its daily report.

The VN30 futures, which reflects market expectations on the movement of large-cap tracker VN30-Index and of the whole market, gained 22.7 points to end Wednesday at 718.00 points.

The gap between the VN30 futures and its reference VN30-Index narrowed to 7.94 points as market sentiment slightly recovered, SHS said.

But the VN-Index may struggle with the resistance zone of 780-800 points in the coming days, the brokerage firm forecast.

The market is being differentiated between groups of stocks on their Q1 earnings reports, so investors may remain cautious as they are careful with investment targets, Thành Công Securities Co (TCSC) said in a note. — VNS