An investor looks at stock boards at a securities firm in HCMC.
Photo by VnExpress/HuuKhoa. 

The VN-Index slipped 0.33 points, or 0.03 percent, to 976.63 points Monday, after gaining in four consecutive sessions last week. 

The Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE), on which the benchmark VN-Index is based, saw 163 stocks losing and 143 gaining.

Order-matched transactions amounted to VND2.1 trillion ($90.45 million), one of the quietest trading sessions this month, far below last month’s average liquidity of VND2.8 trillion ($120.6 million) per session.

However, the VN30-Index for Vietnam’s 30 biggest market caps added 0.29 percent, with 13 gaining and 10 losing. Three stocks in green gained at least 2 percent, while none in red lost over that level.

VPB of private mid-sized lender VPBank led gains with 2.7 percent, followed by MWG of electronics retail giant Mobile World with 2.2 percent, and HPG of leading steelmaker Hoa Phat Group with 2 percent.

CTD of construction giant Coteccons and ROS of real estate developer FLC Faros both gained 1.5 percent. Both are stocks that had been in a freefall for many consecutive sessions, but have picked up recently.

Before the last two sessions, CTD was caught in a losing streak that lost over 20 percent of its value in the past 30 days. The construction giant been reporting declining profits over the past four consecutive quarters, citing rising competition and cost of construction materials.

And for the last 12 of 16 sessions, ROS had been the biggest losing stock on HoSE, hitting its floor price for multiple consecutive sessions, losing over 56 percent since Christmas.

The two largest market cap stocks on VN30, VIC of Vietnam’s biggest private conglomerate Vingroup, and VHM of Vinhomes, also a subsidiary of the group, both kept their opening prices this session.

Meanwhile, VRE of Vincom Retail, Vingroup’s retail arm, was the biggest loser, falling 1.8 percent. It was followed by MSN of food conglomerate Masan Group, which fell 1.3 percent, and HDB of private HDBank, down 1.1 percent.

Two of Vietnam’s three biggest lenders by assets also closed in the red, with VCB of Vietcombank shedding 0.5 percent and BID of BIDV dropping 1.4 percent.

However, CTG of VietinBank, the third bank in this group, rose 0.6 percent. On January 7, the state-owned lender had reported at a year-end conference that profits had surged 83 percent year-on-year in 2019. It has seen its stock surge over 17.5 percent since.

Meanwhile, the HNX-Index for stocks on Hanoi Stock Exchange, Vietnam’s second main bourse for small and midcap stocks, rose 0.73 percent, while the UPCoM-Index for unlisted public companies edged up 0.14 percent.

Foreign investors were net buyers on all three bourses to the tune of VND500 billion ($21.53 million). In particular, they net bought VND558 billion ($24.03 million) worth of shares in MWG of Mobile World, mostly through put-through transactions.