Weighing up stock investment opportunities in 2020

Experts discussing stock opportunities at Forecast Dinner 2020

Nguyen Tu Anh, head of the General Economics Department under the Central Economic Commission made the assessment at a recent event held by the chartered financial analyst (CFA) community in Hanoi.

The event, Forecast Dinner 2020, took place in the context of the novel coronavirus outbreak (nCoV) and touched on the serious impacts on economies and global stock exchanges.

In this context, the VN-Index hit a three-year record low and the event speakers assumed this poses worthwhile opportunities for bottom fishing for good tickers.

“The implications of the outbreak are remarkable, but this severity is not likely to be prolonged. The economy would rebound no later than in the third quarter this year,” Tu Anh opined.

Statistics show that with past pandemics (such as SARS or ebola) the global stock market usually took a deep plunge at the time of the outbreak, then quickly rebounded with news that the outbreak was brought under control.

Meanwhile, Dr Can Van Luc, chief economist and director of the Training Centre under Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV), assumed that the banking and insurance sectors have vast potential for development in 2020.

In Luc’s opinion, the tickers of ICT companies also deserve attention, while the logistics industry, which benefitted from the strong investment in infrastructure and will continue receiving the government's attention, promises further development.

“In addition, although the retail sector is not forecast to grow as robustly as in the previous year, it would maintain its growth momentum this year. I believe the retail sector deserves investors’ attention,” Luc said.

Although the VN-Index closed 2019’s last trading session with a 7.7 per cent jump compared to the beginning of the year, the market failed to create any remarkable rise amidst very positive macro-economic indices.

Accordingly, the GDP was on a consistent upward trend, growing at more than 7 per cent. Inflation was kept at a low level and disbursed foreign investment set a new record by surpassing $20.3 billion.

It is even more disappointing to look at tickers, with half of the tickers on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange (HSX) falling. Generally, two-thirds of tickers on all three floors (HSX, HNX and UPCoM) dropped, according to a report from Vietcombank Fund Management (VCBF), a leading fund manager in Vietnam which is a joint venture between leading state-owned Vietcombank and Franklin Templeton Investments (FTI) – a global leader in asset management domiciled in Luxemburg.