Blue chips drive City market down, Ha Noi makes late rally

Mar 13th at 13:12

13-03-2013 13:12:59+07:00

Blue chips slumped on the Southern stock exchange March 12 pulling the index down.


Source: VietstockFinance

On the HCM City Stock Exchange, the VN-Index gave up 0.24 per cent to close yesteday's session at 475.34 points. Trading improved slightly over Monday, totalling 60.3 million shares, worth VND918.3 billion (US$43.7 million).

Seventeen of the top 30 shares by market capitalisation and liquidity decreased, which made the VN30 decline 0.47 per cent to 547.63 points.

Modest gains of Bao Viet Holdings (BVH), Vietcombank (VCB) and Masan Group (MSN) could not lift the index while other heavyweight shares such as Vietinbank (CTG), Vinamilk (VNM), VinGroup (VIC) and Hoang Anh Gia Lai Group (HAG) all slumped.

Among the few gainers, PetroVietnam Finance (PVF) saw busy after announcing its plan to merge with Western Bank. Following the plan, PVF will seek VND37 trillion ($1.76 billion) worth of capital support from the State Bank of Viet Nam and its parent company, PetroVietnam, to provide liquidity to the new bank after the merger.

Nearly 1.35 million PVF shares were traded yesterday at the price of VND11,600 a share, up 2.65 per cent over the previous session.

However, Tan Tao Investment Industry (ITA) continued to be the most active stock by the end of the afternoon session on trades of 5.4 million shares, rising 4 per cent to VND7,800 a share.

Despite opening low, the HNX-Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange closed up 0.27 per cent at 62.22 points on late buying, even though decliners outnumbered advancers by 115-85.

Total trading value reached over VND501 billion ($23.9 million).

Sai Gon-Ha Noi Bank (SHB) led the market in the afternoon session with a total of 9 million shares traded, but shares declined 1.4 per cent in value to VND7,100 each.

The market seemed to find some equilibrium in the short term after a brief rise on Monday but the absence of strong support information is the reason for an unstable trend, according to analysts of FPT Securities Co.

"Meanwhile, under pressure from the important short-term technical resistance level (480-485 for the VN-Index and 62-63 for the HNX-Index), the probability that the continued uptrend is likely low," they said.

Foreign investors returned as net buyers on the HCM City market, picking up shares worth VND125.6 billion ($6 million), but they were net sellers on the Ha Noi exchange, unloading shares worth over VND13 billion ($625,200).

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