Gravity takes hold of market

The VN-Index sunk 7.63 points or 1.72 per cent to end at 439.95 points. Decliners even rose more strongly to 233 stocks, overwhelming 34 up.

Selling trend focused on speculative stocks, mainly small-cap stocks on mineral, real-estate and construction sectors. Most of those stocks hit the floor today with big offering volumes.

Particularly, Sao Mai Construction Corp. (ASM), Ninh Van Bay Real Estate (NVT), PetroVietnam Transportation Corp. (PVT), Hoang Quan Consulting-Trading-Service Real Estate Corp. (HQC) saw several hundreds of thousand shares still being offered at the close.

Even major stocks tumbled on aggressive selling activities. Real estate stocks Kinhbac City Development Share Holding Corp. (KBC), Licogi 16 (LGC), Investment and Trading Of Real Estate (ITC), along with financial shares Saigon Securities Inc. (SSI), PetroVietnam Finance (PVF) hit the floor.

Leading stocks also saw sharp falls on Hanoi Stock Exchange (HNX), after slightly reducing their falling momentum yesterday. Habubank (HBB), Saigon-Hanoi Commercial (SHB), PetroVietnam Construction (PVX), Kim Long Securities (KLS), Vietnam Construction and Import-Export (VCG) lost 5-7 per cent each.

Some 251 stocks ended off on the HNX, while just 50 up and 97 unchanged. Among them, some 130 stocks hit the floor. The benchmark HNX-Index lost as much as 2.34 points or 3.07 per cent to close at 73.81 points.

However, a slight increase in demand for shares have helped liquidity improve. Saigon Securities Inc. (SSI), along with some banking shares like Eximbank (EIB), Military Bank (MBB) and also real estate stocks LCG were purchased at large bidding volumes.

Liquidity reached 80 million shares worth VND1.23 trillion ($59.3 million) on HoSE. The figure was of 73.3 million shares worth VND707 billion ($34.2 million) on the HNX.

Demand for shares also helped some large-cap stocks like Vietinbank (CTG), Vietcombank (VCB), EIB, Military Bank (MBB) reduced their falling momentum, loosing some 1-2 per cent each.