Vietnamese shares traded marginally on low liquidity on Monday as investors remained cautious ahead of the Tết (Lunar New Year) holiday.

 

The benchmark VN-Index on the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange inched up 0.36 per cent to close at 912.18 points.

 

The southern market index gained 0.73 per cent last week.

 

The HNX Index on the Hà Nội Stock Exchange dropped 0.42 per cent to end at 102.31 points.

 

The northern market index was up 1.16 per cent during the previous week.

 

More than 163.5 million shares were traded on the two local exchanges, worth VNĐ3.4 trillion (US$146 million).

 

Petroleum, real estate and insurance were among the firms that supported the market on Monday morning.

 

The three industry indices respectively gained 1.6 per cent, 0.71 per cent and 1.2 per cent, data on vietstock.vn showed.

 

PetroVietnam Drilling and Well Services (PVD), PetroVietnam Technical Services (PVS) and PetroVietnam Power Corp (POW) were the best three energy gainers with growth ranging from 2.2 per cent to 2.8 per cent.

 

Large-cap stocks also performed well with the blue chip VN-30 Index up 0.12 per cent to 868.76 points.

 

Of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation in the VN30 basket, 15 increased including real estate developer Vinhomes (VHM), insurer Bảo Việt Holdings (BVH), consumer staple Masan (MSN), digital retailer Mobile World (MWG) and jewellery producer Phú Nhuận (PNJ).

 

On the opposite side, banks suffered from profit-taking.

 

Those companies included Asian Commercial Bank (ACB), Techcombank (TCB) and VPBank (VPB).

 

The VN-Index almost always rises in the last few weeks prior to the Tết holiday. As per Bảo Việt Securities Company (BVSC)’s research, the VN-Index has gained in six out of 10 weeks before the Lunar New Year since 2009.

 

Specifically, the week right before Tết in 2018 saw the strongest growth of 5.56 per cent. The week before Tết in 2012 followed with an increase of 5.27 per cent. The remaining years witness a rise ranging from 1.50 per cent to 2.50 per cent in the last week before Tết.

 

Among four years experiencing a drop of the VN-Index before Lunar New Year, 2011 suffered the biggest loss as the VN-Index fell by 1.71 per cent. The declines in the other three years were all below 1 per cent.

 

Regarding liquidity, trading volume all dropped in the last week before Tết over the 10 years observed. This can be explained by the stagnant sentiment of investors.

 

The week before Tết in 2014 saw the biggest weekly loss as trading volume dropped by 85.82 per cent. However, the week prior to Tết in 2018 was the most noteworthy when the VN-Index achieved the strongest growth but liquidity suffered the second sharpest decline over 10 years observed (-72.92 per cent).

 

According to BVSC, in the next session, VN-Index is forecast to keep moving sideways in a narrow range amid a wide divergence among stock groups. Investors are expected to have active trading in some blue-chips of the VN-30 Index. — VNS