Foreign investors executed a significant sell-off today, reversing a positive trend seen earlier in the week. After injecting over 4,000 billion dong into Vietnamese securities, a record for a single trading session, these investors net sold over 3,100 billion dong. This marked the highest net outflow in half a month, dashing hopes that the earlier capital inflow would alleviate months of selling pressure or even lead to stable net buying.
The sell-off saw foreign investors offloading nearly 4,800 billion dong worth of shares while only purchasing less than 1,700 billion dong. The pressure concentrated on leading stocks such as Vingroup, Techcombank, VIB, MBBank, and FPT. This selling spree was the primary factor halting the VN-Index's recovery streak, causing the index to trade below its reference level for most of the day before closing at 1,806 points, a loss of nearly 2 points. The VN30 basket also declined by 3 points, ending at 1,957 points.
Tyler Nguyen Manh Dung, Senior Director of Market Strategy Research at HSC Securities Company, explained the concentrated net selling pressure on industry-leading stocks. He noted that large-cap stocks inherently possess the operational scale, market capitalization, liquidity, and transparency required to attract foreign capital from the outset.
Dung further indicated that since the beginning of the year, foreign investors have primarily withdrawn capital from the banking, real estate, and technology sectors. These industries are currently navigating fluctuations within their internal business environments. Specifically, the banking and real estate sectors face challenges related to monetary policy bottlenecks and a high-interest-rate environment, while the technology sector grapples with issues concerning artificial intelligence.
Market liquidity today reached over 24,000 billion dong, an increase of approximately 8,000 billion dong compared to yesterday. VHM and FPT led the matched order value rankings, recording 976 billion dong and 774 billion dong, respectively. Despite the index's decline, a positive signal emerged from the market breadth, which favored buyers. The Ho Chi Minh City stock exchange saw nearly 170 stocks advance, outnumbering the 130 declining stocks. Within the large-cap basket, 14 stocks gained, while 13 declined.
The market did not exhibit uniform movement across sectors, with most exhibiting significant diversification. For instance, several banking stocks, including MSB, BID, CTG, and VIB, closed above their reference prices, while others like ACB, TCB, and OCB ended the session in the red. Two stocks associated with Vingroup Group, VIC and VHM, together contributed to the index losing nearly 5 points. Other stocks that impacted the decline included HVN, BSR, GAS, and TCB.
Looking ahead, the Yuanta analysis group suggested that the VN-Index could target the 1,830-point level this week. This positive outlook is attributed to an improving macroeconomic picture, driven by a sharp drop in oil prices following the announced ceasefire between the US and Iran. This development is expected to alleviate inflationary pressure, stabilize exchange rates, and lead to lower interest rates. For short-term strategies under one month, the Yuanta analysis group advised investors to consider buying during volatile sessions but to exercise caution and limit chasing if market liquidity does not show improvement.
Phuong Dong
