A customer checks out at a Masan Group's Vinmart in Hà Giang City. The gains of 3.28 per cent of the company shares helped cap the market's losses yesterday. Photo baohagiang.vn

HÀ NỘI — The market ended lower Thursday as selling pressure dominated some attractive stocks in banking, real estate and material sectors. 

The VN-Index lost 13.87 points, or 1 per cent, to close the trading day at 1,374,68 points. The market’s breath turned negative with 204 stocks declining, while 148 stocks rose and 68 ended flat.

The liquidity was much lower than yesterday as nearly VNĐ20.2 trillion (US$877 million) was poured into the southern bourse, equivalent to a trading volume of over 552.3 million shares. 

The fall was due to losses of large-cap stocks which were weighed by selling pressure since the morning session opened. The 30 biggest stocks tracker on HoSE posted a drop of 1.14 per cent to 1,521.21 points. Twenty-one stocks in the VN30 basket fell while only seven stocks rose and two stayed flat. 

On Hà Nội Stock Exchange (HNX), the HNX-Index also plunged 1.2 per cent to 315.98 points.

During the session, more than 140 million shares were traded on the northern market, worth nearly VNĐ3.2 trillion. 

Real estate stocks were still influencing the market’s trend yesterday with No Va Land Investment Group Corporation (Novaland, NVL) losing the most, down 6.1 per cent. 

It was followed by Vingroup JSC (VIC), Vietcombank (VCB) and Vinhomes JSC (VHM). All these stocks fell in a range of 1.7 - 2.63 per cent. 

Other stocks posting losses of more than 1 per cent included Hoà Phát Group (HPG), Vietinbank (CTG), VPBank (VPB), Vietnam Dairy Products JSC (Vinamilk, VNM), Vietnam Rubber Group (GVR), Vincom Retail JSC (VRE) and Vietjet Aviation JSC (VJC).

The market pared losses on gains in some large-cap stocks like Masan Group (MSN), up 3.28 per cent, PetroVietnam Gas JSC (PVGas, GAS), up 1.64 per cent, Mobile World Investment Corporation (MWG), up 4.04 per cent, and Vietnam International Commercial Joint Stock Bank (VIB), up 3.21 per cent. 

With the market’s current moves, analysts from Saigon - Hanoi Securities JSC (SHS) recommended investors watch and see more in the next sessions to find the right direction. 

“Investors who sold for profits last week should not take long positions at this moment and wait until the market corrects deeper to jump in. Meanwhile, investors with large stock proportion in their portfolios also should not take more long positions and reduce the stock proportion during the week’s rallies,” SHS said in a daily report to customers.

On the other hand, foreign investors fled the market again as they net sold a total value of VNĐ258.45 billion on both exchanges. Of which, they net sold a value of VNĐ238.52 billion on HoSE and a value of VNĐ19.93 billion on HNX. VNS