Masan's sauce products displayed in a supermarket. The company shares soared 6.6 per cent on Tuesday. - Photo nhipcaudautu.vn

HÀ NỘI — Vietnamese shares extended gains for a third day as insurance, banking and consumer companies continued their rallies on earnings hopes.

The benchmark VN-Index on the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange gained 0.44 per cent to 929.86 points.

The VN-Index has risen a total of nearly 1.20 per cent in the last three trading days.

The market was boosted by strong performance seen in banking, insurance and consumer sectors.

The three industry indices were up between 1.2 per cent and 1.8 per cent, according to vietstock.vn.

All large-cap stocks in the three sectors increased.

Insurer Bảo Việt Holdings (BVH) gained 1.5 per cent while BIDV Insurance Corp (BIC) soared 7.0 per cent.

In the banking sector, Vietinbank (CTG) jumped nearly 5.0 per cent while the two other State-controlled lenders Vietcombank (VCB) and Bank for Investment and Development of Viet Nam (BID) increased by 0.7 per cent each.

Food and beverage producer Masan (MSN) surged 6.6 per cent to offset the decline of brewer Sabeco (SAB), which fell 2.2 per cent, while dairy firm Vinamilk (VNM) inched up 0.1 per cent.

Those large-cap stocks helped boost the blue-chip tracker VN30-Index up 0.39 per cent to 878.85 points.

The VN30 futures due on October 15 was up only 0.16 per cent to 876.4 points.

The minor gain of the VN30 futures showed investors believed the market would slide in the short term, Sài Gòn-Hà Nội Securities Co (SHS) said in its daily report.

The mid-cap and small-cap trackers on HoSE slid 0.01 per cent and 0.21 per cent, respectively.

Local stocks were strongly divided into the red and the green as some groups of stocks were weighed down by profit taking, SHS said.

Declining stocks outnumbered gainers by 203 to 185 on HoSE while 84 stocks ended flat.

More than 359 million shares were traded on the southern bourse, worth VNĐ6.5 trillion (US$280.4 million).

Trading liquidity dropped about 20 per cent from the previous day, indicating investors were becoming cautious when the VN-Index approached 930 points, SHS said.

The benchmark would test the 930-point level again and investors would still try selling to earn some profits, the company forecast.

On the Hà Nội Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index was up 0.18 per cent to 136.15 points.

The HNX-Index fell 0.74 per cent on Monday. — VNS