An investor looks at stock prices on a smartphone at a brokerage in Ho Chi Minh City.
Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran. 

The number of new securities trading accounts opened by domestic individual investors surged 13 percent month-on-month in November to 41,080. 

This is the highest monthly figure recorded in the country to date, breaking the previous record of 40,500 in March 2018, one month before the benchmark VN-Index reached a historical peak of 1,200 points on April 9, according to the Vietnam Securities Depository (VSD).

In the first 11 months of this year, nearly 329,500 new domestic accounts were opened, up 75 percent year-on-year. The total number of accounts has thus risen to 2.7 million as of November, the VSD said.

Analysts have attributed the trend to declining bank interest rates, which caused more people to switch to stocks, and to the quick recovery of the stock market after falling to its bottom in March when Vietnam recorded a surge in the number of Covid-19 cases.

With the Covid-19 pandemic acting as a drag on credit growth, banks have lowered their 12-month deposit rates to 5.6 percent. In August the State Bank of Vietnam revised its credit growth target for this year from 14 percent to 10.1 percent. It has also cut its policy rates four times so far this year to boost economic activity. The deposit rates were around 7 percent at the beginning of this year.

The VN-Index closed at 1,021 points on Friday, 55 percent up from this year’s bottom on March 31.

The government targets having 3 percent of the population participating in equity markets by the end of this year and 5 percent by 2025 under its Scheme for Restructuring Securities and Insurance Markets, which it finalized in early 2019.