Over 100,000 new stock trading accounts opened in April

This was the second straight month that the number of new stock trading accounts had exceeded 100,000, following a record high of more than 113,000 new accounts in March.

This took the total number of stock trading accounts of domestic investors to over 3.1 million as of late April. Among them, some 11,700 accounts belonged to domestic organizations and the remainder belonged to individual investors.

The average daily turnover of Vietnam’s equity market rose to US$725 million in April from US$596 million the previous month and from US$130 million a year ago. The latest figure is now almost at the same level as Singapore and far higher than Malaysia and Indonesia, according to HSBC.

“The benchmark VN-Index is up 12.4% year-to-date, outperforming all the major regional benchmarks, and it has breached the psychological barrier of 1,200 for the first time, a level it failed to reach during previous bull markets in 2007 and 2018,” the bank said in its Asia Frontier Insight - Vietnam report.

This growth is being supported by both internal and external factors, including strong flows of foreign direct investment, improvements in the manufacturing segment and increased consumption.

“The effective containment of Covid-19 has led to a strong rebound in economic growth and domestic liquidity has fueled the rally, which is being driven by new retail investors,” HSBC added.

Despite the strong growth, from early on, foreign investors have kept fleeing from the country's stock market. According to HSBC, foreign ownership limits are the main problem for foreign investors.

However, the research team from the bank believes that foreign investors cannot ignore Vietnam’s market any longer as it offers a favorable risk-reward opportunity in one of the most resilient growth economies, and the market’s liquidity is rising.