HCMC – The benchmark VN-Index of the Hochiminh Stock Exchange closed in negative territory on March 4, as order placing activities were slowed down due to a system error which has recently occurred on the bourse, especially in the afternoon.
With the number of decliners nearly quadrupling that of advancers at 362 to 95, the main index lost 18.43 points, or 1.55% against the previous session at 1,168.52.
Turnover on the HCMC market improved over 6% in volume and 10% in value over the session earlier at more than 670 million shares and some VND16.8 trillion. Block deals contributed around VND1.5 trillion to the total value.
In the VN30 basket, financial stocks deeply declined, with financial service provider TCH, brokerage SSI, lenders TPB, STB, TCB, MBB plunging 3-4.2%.
Besides this, insurer BVH, consumer goods producer MSN, tech firm FPT, lender BID, retailer VRE dropped 2.1-2.8%, while lender VCB, housing developer VHM, steelmaker HPG and some others fell slightly.
Steelmaker HPG led the HCMC market by liquidity with nearly 28 million shares changing hands. Lenders STB, MBB, TCB reported the respective matching volume of 23.5 million, 23.1 million, 16.1 million shares.
Meanwhile, a host of speculative stocks made gains, including FLC, PVD, PVT, SCR, GEX, and DCM. Of them, property group FLC saw over 23.6 million shares transacted. Also, TLH, TGG, and DQC were among outstanding winners as they hit their upper limits.
In contrast to the southern bourse, trading on the northern bourse was upbeat. The HNX-Index added 1.67 points, or 0.66% versus Wednesday at 255.77. Notably, oil and gas stock PVS soared a whopping 8.4% and was the most actively traded stock on the Hanoi market, with over 27 million shares traded.