The Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE), on which the VN-Index is based, bled red with 312 tickers losing and just 56 gaining. Of these, 59 tickers fell to their floor price, the lowest they can go in a single session.

Tuesday’s session saw the highest volume of shares change hands on HoSE so far this year, worth VND6.07 trillion ($258.27 million). Of these, VND5.11 trillion ($217.43 million) came from order-matched transactions, nearly 50 percent higher than the average order-matched liquidity of the past month.

Analysts attribute the surge in liquidity partly to investors placing sell orders to cash in on short-term gains of the previous two weeks, which saw the VN-Index rising in all but two sessions.

They noted that selling pressure was spread evenly over various groups of stocks this session, with the VN30-Index for the market’s 30 biggest market caps not accounting for the overwhelming proportion of total trading volume as in most previous sessions.

The VN-Index plunged 1.8 percent within the first 30 minutes of trading this session, with losses led by oil and gas stocks, following news that U.S. oil prices had crashed into the negative for the first time in history.

With the coronavirus pandemic leaving the world with too much oil and not enough storage capacity, traders were paying buyers to take the commodity off their hands, driving the West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark, as low as -$40.32 Tuesday morning.

The VN30-Index this session plunged 4.03 percent, with 30 of its stocks in the red, six of which sank to their floor prices.

ROS of real estate developer FLC Faros, the lowest-capped stock on the VN30, and CTD of construction giant Coteccons both led losses with 7 percent.

They were followed by PLX of petroleum distributor Petrolimex, VRE of mall operator Vincom Retail, VPB of private VPBank, and SBT of agricultural firm TTC-Sugar, all of which fell 6.9 percent.

State-owned banks were among the big losers. Two of three biggest lenders by assets, BID of BIDV, CTG of VietinBank plunged 6.5 percent and 5.3 percent, respectively. The third, VCB of Vietcombank, did better, falling just 0.6 percent.

MBB of mid-sized lender Military Bank also shed 6 percent.

Private banking stocks also lost hard today, with STB of Sacombank and HDB of HDBank both falling 5.9 percent, and TCB of Techcombank dropping 4.8 percent.

Stocks of companies related to national oil and gas group PetroVietnam all ended their gaining streaks. GAS of energy giant PetroVietnam Gas shed 6.2 percent.

Other major losing tickers this session included MWG of electronics retail Mobile World, down 5.8 percent, HPG of leading steelmaker Hoa Phat Group, 4.7 percent and MSN of food conglomerate Masan Group, also down 4.7 percent.

Meanwhile, the HNX-Index for stocks on the Hanoi Stock Exchange, home to mid and small caps, dropped 4.54 percent, and the UPCoM-Index for stocks on the Unlisted Public Companies Market fell 2.77 percent.

Foreign investors were net sellers for the 16th consecutive session on all three bourses for a total of VND247 billion ($10.51 million), with selling pressure mostly on BID of BIDV and STB of Sacombank.