Vietnamese shares ended on Monday on a negative note as investors sought ways to exit the market ahead of the Tết (Lunar New Year) holiday.
The benchmark VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange dropped 0.28 per cent to close at 965.84 points.
The VN-Index gained a total of 0.35 per cent last week.
More than 147 million shares were traded on the southern bourse, worth VNĐ2.76 trillion (US$119.3 million).
Market trading conditions were negative as declining stocks outnumbered gainers by 205 to 123, while 57 stocks ended flat.
All three sub-indices that monitor stocks by market capitalisation and trading liquidity on the HoSE declined between 0.25 per cent and 0.66 per cent.
The large-cap VN30-Index, which tracks the performance of the 30 largest stocks by market value and trading liquidity, lost 0.42 per cent to close at 881.79 points.
Among the decliners in the VN30 basket were lenders BIDV (BID), VPBank (VPB) and Vietinbank (CTG), logistics firm Gemadept (GMD), property developer Novaland (NVL) and dairy producer Vinamilk (VNM).
Among those stocks, BIDV shares lost 2.3 per cent after it had soared 12 per cent last week.
Vietinbank shares fell 1.5 per cent after having gained 10.5 per cent last week.
VPBank shares was down 2.1 per cent following weekly growth of 5.5 per cent.
The banking sector also had the most negative impact on the stock market as it dropped 0.84 per cent, data on vietstock.vn showed.
“It seems investors wanted take a break as Tết is coming,” Sài Gòn-Hà Nội Securities Co (SHS) said in its daily report.
“That’s why they tried to take profits in stocks that had made gains before, making the market underperform,” SHS said.
Low market trading liquidity indicated investors were still pessimistic about the market’s short-term outlook, the company added.
The VN-Index may continue swinging between 950 points and 970 points in the next few days as it did in the past six weeks, SHS forecast.
On the Hà Nội Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index was up only 0.08 per cent to end at 102.30 points on Monday.
The northern market index inched down 0.17 per cent last week.
Nearly 26.7 million shares were traded on the northern market, worth VNĐ277.4 billion. – VNS
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