More than 75,000 trading accounts were opened on the derivatives market as of the end of June, officials announced on July 25.

A trading office of VPBank Securities JSC in Hanoi (Photo: VNA)

The figure was up 30 percent from the end of 2018. The average number of futures contracts traded in each session in June reached nearly 100,000.

After its launch in August 2017, the derivatives market has been warmly welcomed by investors seeking opportunities to trade VN30-Index futures contracts whenever the common stock market gets into uncertain territory, according to Le Trong Minh, Editor- in-chief of Dau Tu (Investment) newspaper.

The derivatives market has helped investors hedge risks, kept money on the equities market, allowed investors to seek short-term profits and stabilised the common stock market.

However, there have been some problems with the market such as the small number of institutional investors joining the derivatives market, high volatility and a lower-than-expected number of transactions.

As the Government wants the Vietnamese equities market to reach 100 percent of Vietnam’s gross domestic product (GDP) by 2020 and the number of active investors accounts for 3 percent of the population, a mechanism needs to be developed to foster professional investors, said Pham Thi Thuy, director of virtual derivatives market project at VPBank Securities (VPBS).

To help individual investors sharpen their knowledge, skills and understanding of the derivatives market, Dau Tu newspaper and VPBS will launch a contest on virtual derivatives trading from August 1 to July 31, 2020.

Contestants will be able to compete on a virtual trading platform provided by VPBS. Awards will be given weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly for investors with the best profit and the highest number of futures contracts traded, along with a lucky draw.

The total value of prizes is 1.1 billion VND (47,300 USD) for 654 awards. The highest-valued award is 200 million VND and will be given to the investor with the best trading profit of the year.

The contest will help investors share their ideas, knowledge and skills as well as provide training for all contestants, Minh said.

Each investor will receive an initial 100 million VND when registering in the virtual trading contest. The virtual trading platform can be downloaded from the Apple Store and Google Play.