Shares continued to fall on Tuesday due to the uneasy global market and the worries among investors about the US Fed’s imminent interest rate hike decision.

The VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange edged down 0.69 per cent to end the trading at 927.25 points.

On Monday, it fell 1.93 per cent to end at 933.65 points.

On the Ha Noi Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index also fell 0.56 per cent to 104.42 points.

The index fell 1.54 per cent to 105.01 points on Monday.

More than 227 million shares worth a combined VNĐ5 trillion (US$216 million) were traded on the two markets.

Meanwhile, market breadth was negative. Declining stocks outnumbered gaining stocks by 288 to 145 while 321 other stocks ended flat.

According to Bảo Việt Securities Company (BVSC), due to cautious sentiment and worries of investors about the possibility of the market’s short-term downtrend, selling pressure increased in many stocks groups.

“Market’s demand and supply may turn more balanced in the next sessions when the market falls to strong support zones,” BVSC said in its daily report.

Across the 20 sectors on the stock market, 16 industries saw share prices drop, including energy firms, property developers, brokerages, construction material and food and beverage producers.

The VN30 Index, which tracks the overall performance of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation, was down 1.19 per cent to 890.68 points.

On Tuesday, the negative movements of the world stocks strongly affected the Vietnamese market and investors’ sentiment.

According to Reuters, Asian markets were down on Tuesday, contributing to concerns about the global economy that brought Wall Street stocks to their lowest levels in more than a year.

S&P 500 lost 2.08 per cent on Monday, hitting its lowest mark since October 2017. It has lost about $3.4 trillion of market value since late September.

The Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.27 per cent.

Investors were also quite cautious as they carefully followed the market movements ahead of the US Federal Reserve’s (FED) meeting on Wednesday, which is expected to witness the fourth interest rate hike of FED this year.

Domestic oil stocks were hit hard by the slump of global oil prices.

US crude fell as low as $47.84 per barrel, its lowest since September last year. Brent crude oil futures fell 3 per cent to $57.79 per barrel.

Laggards in the oil group were PetroVietnam Drilling & Well Services Corporation (PVD), PetroVietnam Technical Services Corporation (PVS), PetroViet Nam Coating JSC (PVB) and Viet Nam National Petroleum Group (PLX).

However, during the last minutes of the trading day, many large cap stocks such as Bank for Investment and Development (BID), Petro Vietnam Gas JSC (GAS), Military Bank (MBB), Mobile World Group (MWG), Techcombank (TCB) and Vietcombank (VCB), narrowed their downward momentum, lessening the pressure on the overal market.

However, the indexes failed to rebound as many large cap stocks still plunged, including insurer Bảo Việt Holdings (BVH), falling by 4 per cent, IT giant FPT (FPT) moving down by 2.3 per cent, jewellery producer Phú Nhuận (PNJ) decreasing by 3.7 per cent.— VNS