Investment funds make modest gains

Investment funds reported their growth rates had been outpaced by the banking system’s one-year saving rate, which is around 6.6 per cent, data on cafef.vn showed.- Photo cafef.vn

At the end of September, the benchmark VN-Index on the HCM Stock Exchange gained total 3.34 per cent from its 2017 end of 984.24 points.

The large-cap VN30 Index, which represents the group of large-cap stocks with the greatest impact on the movement of the market, was up nearly 2 per cent during the nine months.

Investment funds reported their growth rates had been outpaced by the banking system’s one-year saving rate, which is around 6.6 per cent, data on cafef.vn showed.

Among foreign-owned investment funds that out-performed the VN-Index in the first nine months, the best-performing was the Sweden-based Tundra Vietnam Fund with growth rate of 12.2 per cent.

Funds with similar performances were followed by others such as Singaporean fund LionGlobal Vietnam Fund (9.1 per cent), British fund Dragon Capital VEUF (4.9 per cent) and South Korean fund KIM Vietnam Growth Equity Fund (3.4 per cent).

The funds with growth rates lower than that of the VN-Index included UK-based FTSE Vietnam ETF (3 per cent), Dragon Capital VEIL (1.4 per cent) and JPMorgan VOF (0.8 per cent).

Two foreign funds that recorded negative growth rates were Pyn Elite Fund (-0.7 per cent) and VNM ETF (-3.4 per cent).

Among local funds, Saigon Securities Inc’s SSIAM VNX50 ETF had the best growth rate (7.3 per cent), followed by Thiên Việt Securities JSC’s TVAM TVGF1 (6.1 per cent).

Techcom Capital TCEF and another fund of SSI – SSI SCA – were the two local funds that recorded negative growth rates (-10.7 per cent and -0.9 per cent, respectively).

Other funds such as VCBF-BCF of Vietcombank, VinaCapital VEOF and VNĐirect Securities JSC’s VND Direct Active Fund had their growth rates beaten by the growth of the VN-Index.

The reason investment funds were out-performed by the VN-Index was that those funds had not invested much in shares of property developer and retailer Vingroup, the largest company by market capitalisation, according to cafef.vn.

Vingroup shares, listed on the HCM Stock Exchange as VIC, grew by 27 per cent in nine months and were among the driving factors for the growth of the stock market.

Meanwhile, the volatility of the USD/VND exchange rate is another factor that has been causing problems for investment funds in making investment in local stocks.

The daily reference exchange rate set by the State Bank of Vietnam for trading of foreign currencies in the country rose around 1.3 per cent in nine months to VND22,714 for a dollar.

The increase of exchange rate encourages foreign investors to sell local stocks to earn profits on the difference between the US dollar and the Vietnamese đồng, thus, resulting in the outflow of foreign capital in Vietnam, analysts have said.