VN-Index soars to 32-month peak

The Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE), on which the VN-Index is based, saw 275 stocks gain and 174 lose this session.

Out of VND14.46 trillion ($627.73 million) in total trading value this session, 60 percent went into stocks outside the VN30, a basket of the HoSE’s 30 largest capped tickers.

Before the third quarter this year, blue chips had consistently attracted more than half of cash flow every session, but this situation began to change when Covid-19 began to affect the big companies’ bottom lines, and investors paid more attention to lesser known stocks in their search for new growth opportunities.

Brokerage BVSC, in its latest report, has warned that investors should carefully watch out for the publication of final-quarter financial reports, because they are likely to cause major movements in related stocks.

Analysts observed that many large cap stocks saw sudden surges in buy orders in the last minutes of trading this session, which they suspect may have been large funds "making portfolio moves" at the end of the year.

This happens when organizations and investment funds place large buy orders of tickers in their portfolios to prop up their prices, resulting in better Net Asset Value (NAV) valuations at the year-end to present to investors.

Or funds can "rebalance their portfolios" by selling off stocks that account for a small proportion of their portfolio but have a larger impact on the index, thereby making their portfolio look more profitable than the general market.

The VN30-Index for the stock market’s largest caps rose 0.39 percent Tuesday, with 18 stocks gaining and 10 losing.

The biggest gainers of the session were VRE of mall operator Vincom Retail and VHM of real estate giant Vinhomes, up 3.9 percent and 3 percent respectively. Both companies are subsidiaries of Vingroup, Vietnam’s largest private conglomerate, whose VIC ticker is the largest cap on HoSE. VIC added 0.6 percent this session.

Public banking and oil and gas were two industries with mixed results.

Of Vietnam’s three largest lenders by assets, BID of BIDV rose 1.9 percent and VCB of Vietcombank gained 1.2 percent, but CTG of VietinBank shed 0.4 percent. MBB of mid-sized Military Bank was down 0.4 percent.

In the oil and gas industry POW of electricity generator PetroVietnam Power climbed 2.3 percent and Gas of energy giant PetroVietnam Gas edged up 0.2 percent, while PLX of gasoline distributor Petrolimex fell 0.2 percent.

Other major gainers this session were real estate developers, KDH of Khang Dien House was up 1.4 percent, TCH of Hoang Huy Group, 1.3 percent, and NVL of Novaland, 1.2 percent.

In the opposite direction, VPB of private VPBank topped losses with 1.9 percent, followed by SSI of brokerage SSI Securities Corporation, down 1.9 percent, and ROS of construction firm FLC Faros, down 0.8 percent.

Private banking did relatively poorly this session, with HDB of HDBank down 0.8 percent, STB of Sacombank 0.3 percent and EIB of Eximbank keeping its opening price. TCB of Techcombank added 0.2 percent.