Market keeps sliding on sluggish trade
By Phuong Thao - The Saigon Times Daily
HCMC – The local market witnessed another boring session on Tuesday as it lost ground for the second straight day while liquidity remained at a pitiful level. The VN-Index dropped 1.92 points, or 0.47%, against the previous day to close at 408.6.
The market opened just into the red but subsequently moved steadily lower to hit a daily low of 405.17. It recovered in the second half of the trading day and then finally closed just under two points below Monday’s close.
There were only 24.6 million shares worth VND262.6 billion traded on the southern exchange at the end of the day, falling 2% and 11% from the day earlier respectively.
Losers once again outnumbered gainers by 140 to 90, including 21 stocks going to the ceiling prices and 37 stocks plunging to the floor prices.
Military Bank (MBB) took the lead for liquidity, falling 2.4% against the previous session to VND12,000 per share with 1.1 million shares changing hands. Hoang Quan Consulting-Trading-Service Real Estate Corporation (HQC), the second biggest traded stock, lost 2.1% to VND9,200 on the volume of 962,000 shares.
Foreigners turned active net sellers after maintaining net buying in 10 days in a row. They acquired 2.2 million shares worth VND139.7 billion and offloaded 4.8 million shares worth VND178.8 billion, accounting for 25% and 32% of the market’s buying and selling value respectively.
The Hanoi market made some gains after hitting its record low on Tuesday with turnover edging down to VND262 billion. The HNX-Index rose 0.11 point, or 0.17%, from the previous session and ended the day at 65.13.
There were 87 stocks rising while 112 stocks closed in the red, of which 10 stocks went to the ceiling prices and 26 stocks dropped to the floor prices. Foreigners accounted for 0.6% of the buying value and 0.9% of the selling value.
HCMC Securities Corp. said sentiment is likely to remain fragile over the coming days, although the downward momentum could diminish as both indexes are reaching technical support levels. Nevertheless, it seems too early to get into banking and property stocks and with the sectors having the biggest weight in the stock market it is hard to see where the positive news has to come from.
Viet Capital Securities Co. said some stocks seemed to bottom out on Tuesday but it would have to see if this was sustainable.
“We are waiting for clear signals before buying. We removed KLS from our short-term recommendation list with a loss of 9.8%. We also closed our medium-term recommendation on DPM with a loss of 13.8%. For now, we only keep PGS in short-term list and KBC in mid-term list,” the broker added.