Stock market down as trade war escalates

Overall, on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE), on which the VN-Index is based, 101 stocks gained and 206 stocks lost at the end of Monday session.

Vietnam’s index for its 30 highest market cap stocks, the VN30-Index, fell 0.89 percent to 892.48 points.

The HNX-Index, which represents a separate market for smaller and mid-cap stocks, fell 0.43 percent, and the UPCoM-Index for unlisted public companies fell 0.71 percent.

Blue-chips, real estate and oil and gas stocks were mostly losers in this session, with 12 stocks falling by above 2 percent. GAS shares of state-owned oil and gas corporation PetroVietnam Gas JSC fell 2.5 percent, and CTD shares of construction giant Coteccons dropped 2.9 percent.

VIC shares of private conglomerate Vingroup and VHM shares of its real estate arm, the two largest market cap stocks on HoSE, also lost 0.2 and 1.1 percent respectively.

The only exception to the general selling trend of the market were some banking stocks, such as MBB of military-owned MBBank (up 0.65 percent), BID of state-owned lender BIDV (up 0.3 percent), and stocks of industrial parks and seaports.

Asian stocks sank after President Donald Trump announced on Twitter an additional 5 percent duty on some $550 billion in targeted Chinese goods, in his latest move escalating the China-American trade spat.

Investors worldwide piled onto gold and safe-haven Japanese yen as U.S. stocks, the dollar, and oil prices fell.

The increase in tariffs on Chinese imports follows news earlier on Friday that China will impose $75 billion worth of duties on U.S. goods in a retaliatory move, beginning September 1 and December 15.

On Monday, the U.S. S&P 500 fell 2.59 percent, China’s Shanghai composite rose 0.49 percent, while other stocks in East Asia, such as Japan’s Nikkei 225, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng, and Thailand’s SET indices all fell by above 1 percent.