Prolonged sell-off keeps pressuring local stocks
Prolonged sell-off keeps pressuring local stocks
A sell-off amid the development of the COVID-19 pandemic continued to bring local stocks down on Friday morning. 
The benchmark VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange dropped 1.66 per cent to close at 713.89 points.
The VN-Index lost 2.91 per cent on Thursday.
The HNX-Index inched down 0.21 per cent to end at 100.77 points on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange.
The northern market index was down 0.84 per cent on Thursday.
Nearly 150 million shares were traded on the two exchanges, worth nearly VND2 trillion (US$85.5 million).
The figure included more than 124.6 million shares being traded via order-matching deals, worth VND1.46 trillion.
A prolonged strong sell-off continued hitting local stocks amid worries about the global economic recession caused by the pandemic.
The number of decliners on the two exchanges doubled that of gainers by 285 to 141 while 124 stocks ended flat.
Large-cap stocks faded as the large-cap tracker VN30-Index fell nearly 1 per cent in the morning session.
In the VN30 basket, 16 of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation and trading liquidity declined.
Losers in the large-cap basket included Vincom Retail (VRE), HDBank (HDB), Vinhomes (VHM), Vietcombank (VCB), Vingroup (VIC) and sugar firm Thanh Thanh Cong-Bien Hoa JSC (SBT).
The afternoon trading session starts at 1pm.
