Although its gains had slowed in the last four trading sessions, the index picked up again on Tuesday, with the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE) registering 200 tickers in the green and 189 in the red.

The benchmark VN-Index, which is based off HoSE, was negative for the most of the session, until a surge in buy orders on blue chips late in the day brought it back into the green.

Total trading volume this session remained at high levels at VND9.19 trillion ($396.56 million), far above last month’s average of VND6.6 trillion per session, with nearly 60 percent of it going towards the VN30, a basket of the HoSE’s 30 biggest capped stocks.

The VN30-Index added 0.66 percent, with 17 tickers gaining and 10 losing.

Private banks were among the best performers, with TCB of Techcombank surging 3.9 percent, HDB of HDBank up 2.2 percent, EIB of Eximbank 1.7 percent, VPB of VPBank 1.4 percent and STB of Sacombank 0.7 percent.

MBB of state-owned mid-sized Military Bank also performed well, gaining 2.5 percent. Of Vietnam’s three largest state-owned lenders by assets, BID of BIDV and VCB of Vietcombank edged up 0.2 percent, while CTG of VietinBank shed 0.2 percent.

Other major gainers included ROS of construction firm FLC Faros, up 3.1 percent, MSN of food conglomerate Masan Group, 2.1 percent, and HPG of steelmaker Hoa Phat Group, 1.6 percent.

The real estate sector was also mostly in the green, with TCH of Hoang Huy Group adding 1.5 percent, KDH of Khang Dien House, 0.8 percent and VHM of Vinhomes, 0.1 percent. However, NVL of Novaland was down 1 percent.

GAS of energy giant PetroVietnam Gas topped losses with 1.9 percent, followed by VNM of dairy giant Vinamilk, down 1.4 percent, and SAB of major brewer Sabeco, down 1.1 percent.

The HNX-Index for the Hanoi Stock Exchange, home to mid- and small-caps, was down 0.39 percent, while the UPCoM-Index for the Unlisted Companies Market slumped 0.38 percent.

Foreign investors continued to be net sellers this session to the tune of VND900 billion on all three bourses. The most net sold stocks were DIG of construction firm Development Investment Construction JSC, which accounted for nearly VND500 billion of the net sell, and MSN of Masan Group.

DIG surged 4.53 percent this session, with VND493 billion of its net sell coming from put-through share transfers from foreign to domestic investors.