Foreign investors today disbursed approximately 2,100 billion VND, while sales reached nearly 4,900 billion VND. HDBank led the list of most divested stocks, with foreign investors selling over 73 million shares. PNJ followed, with nearly 5 million shares net sold, pushing its price to the floor limit.

Today's net selling extended a 10-session consecutive capital withdrawal streak, totaling 10,800 billion VND, equivalent to 420 million USD. Cumulatively from the beginning of the year, foreign investors have withdrawn approximately 3,7 billion USD from Vietnamese securities.

Continuous selling pressure reduced foreign ownership in Vietnam to just 13,2% by the end of september. According to Tyler Nguyen Manh Dung, Senior Director of Market Strategy Research at TP HCM Securities Company, this marks the lowest historical level and a decrease of approximately 3 percentage points compared to the same period last year.

Foreign ownership percentage in the Vietnamese stock market. *Photo: HSC*

Experts attribute the significant capital withdrawal after the upgrade date to two main reasons.

First, a phase mismatch in the trading behavior of investment funds is evident. Active investment funds, which had bought in anticipation of the upgrade information months ago, are actively taking profits to restructure their portfolios. Meanwhile, passive funds had completed their initial disbursement of a 10% allocation before the upgrade date, resulting in negligible current trading activity.

Second, the impact of opportunity cost and the global capital shift trend are factors. International capital is leaving emerging markets, flowing into areas with superior earnings growth stories, such as technology stocks in the US, Japan, and China.

"During periods of monetary policy tightening to curb inflation, international capital tends to prioritize returning to the US, creating a significant impediment to the recovery of Vietnamese securities", MB Securities Company's analysis team wrote in their strategy report early last week.

The upgrade to a secondary emerging market status was a rare positive short-term development, but it could not overcome global macroeconomic pressures. Therefore, foreign investors are predicted to continue selling off in the coming months, though the scale is likely to shrink.

The VN-Index is currently fluctuating around the 1,760-point mark. Compared to just before the upgrade date, the index representing the TP HCM exchange has lost approximately 3%. Stocks related to Vingroup Group continue to heavily influence the index. For example, today, despite a greater number of declining stocks than advancing ones, the VN-Index still rose due to the momentum of VHM and VPL.

Market liquidity remains consistently low, with no session surpassing 20,000 billion VND since the upgrade.

Phuong Dong