Panic selling as Vietnam stock market drops by eighteen points

An investor points at stock prices on the screens at a brokerage in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran

Vietnam’s benchmark VN-Index continued to plunge Tuesday morning, losing by up to eighteen points, as the ripple effect of plunging speculative stocks dragged the market down, VN Express reported.

The index started off in the red and dropped to 1,434 points at around 10:30 a.m., lowest since the last major drop on December 6.

335 tickers, or 65 percent of stocks on the main bourse Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE), were in the red, with forty-one of them at floor price.

Several analysts have said that the falling of VN-Index in recent days came as speculative stocks like those of real estate developer FLC have pulled the market down, especially as investors who use leverage were forced to sell.

Speculative real estate stocks like CEO of CEO Group, DIG of Development Investment Construction and CII of Ho Chi Minh City Infrastructure Investment started off the day at floor price.

FLC and related stocks are also at floor price with almost no buyers.

Brokerage stocks continued to be sold in droves with SSI of leading brokerage SSI Securities Corporation falling 2.9 percent and VND of brokerage VNDirect dropping 4.2 percent.

Howevere, seventeen out of thirty blue chip stocks were in the green, led by STB of Ho Chi Minh City-based lender Sacombank, up 5.1 percent and BID of state-owned lender BIDV, 3.4 percent.

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