People shopping at Winmart's store, a supermarket chain operated by Masan Group. MSN shares climbed more than 2.8 per cent on Friday, leading the market's uptrend. Photo masangroup.com

HÀ NỘI — The market reversed the bearish course and finished the week higher in the last minutes. Foreign capital also showed a signal of improvement as foreign investors net bought on both main exchanges. 

On the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE), the market's benchmark VN-Index was up 6.21 points, or 0.56 per cent, to 1,107.53 points, recouping some of the losses set in the previous session. 

It fell by 8.22 points on Thursday on strong profit-taking demand after five straight gaining days. 

Persistent selling pressure continued to weigh on the index in the early trade, causing the fluctuation around the area of 1,090-1,100 points.  And it only rebounded in the last trading minutes when the risk-on sentiment, which lifted large-cap stocks, overshadowed the profit-taking force. 

The market's movement was in line with the expectations of an analyst team of Saigon - Hanoi Securities JSC. "With a good accumulation base, we expect that the market will continue to add points after the correction, aiming for the target of around 1,150 points," said SHS.

The market's breadth, however, was still in the negative as declining stocks outnumbered rising ones. 

Meanwhile, liquidity fell sharply from the six-month high hit in the previous session, of which the trading value and volume on the southern bourse decreased by 30.2 per cent and 30.6 per cent, respectively, to VNĐ16.5 trillion and 902.2 million shares. 

The VN30-Index, tracking the 30 biggest stocks on HoSE, closed Friday at 1,100.85 points, an increase of 8.39 points, or 0.77 per cent. In the VN30 basket, 18 stocks inched up, while 11 ticker symbols went down, and one finished unchanged. 

Leading the market's uptrend were stocks in manufacturing and financial industries. Particularly, Masan Group (MSN) was the biggest gainer, with a rise of 2.82 per cent in market capitalisation. 

Other stocks in the top five dominating the trend were Vietcombank (VCB), Techcombank (TCB), Đức Giang Chemicals (DGC) and SSI Securities Corporation (SSI), with ĐGC shares even logging the biggest intra-day gain of 7 per cent. 

Supporting the market sentiment, stocks in real estate, technology and retail sectors, such as Novaland (NVL), FPT Corporation (FPT) and Mobile World Investment Corporation (MWG), also performed well in the last trading session of the week. 

In contrast, some big names continued to face sell-off pressure, with BIDV (BID) down 0.57 per cent, Techcombank (TCB) down 0.7 per cent, and Vietjet Aviation JSC (VJC) dropping 1.23 per cent. 

On the Hà Nội Stock Exchange (HNX), the HNX-Index also closed higher on Friday. It gained 0.82 points, or 0.36 per cent, to 227.6 points. 

During the session, nearly 128 million shares were traded on the northern bourse, worth more than VNĐ1.95 trillion. 

Foreign investors also returned to the market as they net bought over VNĐ75 billion on both exchanges. Of which, they net bought VNĐ44.96 billion on HoSE and more than VNĐ30 billion on HNX.