The VN-Index, which is a capitalization-weighted index of all the companies listed on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange (HOSE), closed at 945.89, down 4.84 percent for a total of 48.07 points from Wednesday.
The VN30-Index, representing the 30 largest stocks in terms of capitalization, went down by 46 points, or 4.79 percent, to 920 points.
The HNX-Index on the Hanoi Stock Exchange went down by 5.79 percent and the UPCoM-Index for unlisted companies slipped 3.31 percent.
This means that over VND150 trillion ($6.5 billion) has been swept away from the HOSE.
300 HOSE stocks closed in the red, just 30 ended the day in green. In the VN30-Index, all blue chips fell, with the 10 top stocks dropping a total of 18 points.
Serveral banks including Techcombank (TCB), Vietnam International Bank (VIB), Vietcombank (VCB) and TPBank (TPB) dropped by between 5 to 7 percent.
Foreigners’ net selling on HOSE was valued at VND283.4 billion ($12.21 million) on Thursday.
The drop in stocks comes after a sell-off that began on Wall Street rippled across Asian markets as concerns over the impact of rising interest rates intensified.
In the U.S., the Dow Jones Industrial (DJI) dropped by over 831 points to 25,600 points, while Nasdaq Composite fell by over 4 percent to 7,422 points and S&P 500 (.INX) went down 3.3 percent to 2,786 points.
These were the sharpest plunges for Dow Jones and S&P since February, and for Nasdaq Composite since July 24.
Branch director of stock company KIS Vietnam, Nguyen Kim Chi, said that although the Vietnamese benchmark was affected by the world’s plunge, it would recover soon.
In the worst case scenario, VN-Index will fall to 950 points, he told local media.