Market continues to plummet

The consumer price index (CPI) for February climbed 1.98 per cent in Hanoi and 1.61 per cent in Ho Chi Minh City, likely to boost the indicator up 4 per cent for the first quarter and strictly threatens the government’s target of reining in inflation at 7 per cent.

The CPI details follow the central bank’s announcement to tighten credit this year to curb inflation, adding to the ongoing bad macroeconomic situation.

At the close of today session, the VN-Index of the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE) lost 13.66 points (2.82 per cent), compared with the biggest drop within more than one year of 20 points yesterday, ending at 470.02 points

Meanwhile, the Hanoi Stock Exchange’s  (HNX) HNX-Index sharply fell 12.35 points or 11.46 per cent to 95.46 points, accounted for a seventh straight negative sessions of the bourse.

Downward trends still cover the market. Up to 207 stocks dropped out of 285 stocks listing on HoSE, while 234 declined on the HNX, compared with just 34 up.

Notably, amount of hitting-floor stocks continued reaching the record high, at 92 on the HoSE and 69 for HNX, a 10-fold higer the average numbers in normal sessions.

Blue-chip stocks PetroVietnam Finance (PVF), PetroVietnam Fertilisers (DPM) and Bao Viet Holding (BVH) hit the floor.

Saigon Securities Inc. (SSI), Kim Long Securities (KLS) and Bao Viet Securities (BVS) were also among the top decliners with drops of more than 4 per cent each.

Banking shares saw just a modest decline, however, with Vietinbank (CTG) lost 0.42 per cent, Sacombank (STB) 0.69 per cent, Habubank (HBB) 1.00 per cent while Asia Commercial Bank (ACB) off 1.35 per cent.

While analysts saw the strongly bad movements of stock market as reflecting the whole economy, some investors showed quite positive.

“All of the worst things [in the stock market] are reveating, it might be followed by a recovery,” said a Hanoi-based investor.

In fact, liquidity had been relatively increased by a number of investors buying-in in the bearish market. Trading value on HoSE stood at VND1.16 trillion ($56 million) with volume reached 52.16 million units.

On the HNX, 41.89 million shares worth VND662.19 billion ($32 million) changed hands, up 16.14 per cent and 12.21 per cent respectively.

Foreigners, however, strongly sold out. They boosted their sell-off to eight million units while keeping buying volume at 3.7 million units, accounted for the net value of as high as VND101.42 billion ($5 million) on HoSE.

On the northern bourse foreign investors also strongly sold up to 2.17 million shares, compared with 862,000 buying ones.