A Bảo Việt Life Insurance office in Nam Từ Liêm District, Hà Nội. The insurer's shares gained 1.2 per cent on Friday. — VNA/VNS Photo Trần Việt

HÀ NỘI — Vietnamese shares finished the week on a positive note as key sectors such as financials and banking continued rising.

The benchmark VN-Index on the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange rose 0.77 per cent to end Friday at 854.78 points.

The VN-Index dropped 0.35 per cent on Thursday.

The benchmark gained total 0.47 per cent this week.

The blue-chip tracker VN30-Index was up nearly 1 per cent to 793.60 points.

On the derivatives market, the VN30 futures maturing on September 20 was up 1.47 per cent to 792.9 points.

The mid-cap and small-cap indices also made their way up, increasing by 1.47 per cent and 1.29 per cent, respectively.

Financial-banking companies maintained their strong growth to keep boosting the market.

The banking, brokerage and insurance sector indices gained between 1.2 per cent and 1.9 per cent, according to vietstock.vn.

BIDV Insurance (BIC), Bảo Việt Holdings (BVH), VietCapital Securities (VCI), SSI Securities (SSI, HCM City Securities (HCM), Vietinbank (CTG), Sacombank (STB), VPBank (VPB) and TPBank (TPB) were among the best gainers.

Other gaining sectors included information and technology, mining and energy, plastic and chemical production, seafood processing, and material production.

On the Hà Nội Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index expanded for a third consecutive day as it was up 1.20 per cent to close Friday at 122.64 points.

The northern market index has totalled a three-day increase of 4.8 per cent and a weekly gain of 5.51 per cent.

More than 335 million shares were traded on the two exchanges, worth VNĐ5.62 trillion (US$241.4 million).

Foreign investors net-sold total VNĐ291.8 billion worth of local shares.

According to Thành Công Securities Co (TCSC), many groups of stocks had strong growth on Friday and the market’s trading liquidity got stronger.

 “The gap of minus 0.7 points between the large-cap VN30-Index and its futures shows the market confidence is increasing in the short term,” Sài Gòn-Hà Nội Securities (SHS) said in a note.

“The VN-Index had its third rising week but the growth was narrowed by the end of the week,” SHS said.

“Trading liquidity was little changed from the previous week and still lower than the 20-day average, proving the purchasing power has weakened.”

In the short term, the market would still go up but the gain would be modest and any falls were highly expected, the company said. — VNS