Late-session buying pressure saves VN-Index

Expectations for a breakout rally continued to be dashed as the stock market experienced a volatile final trading session of the week, with weak liquidity and a return to strong net selling by foreign investors. Although strong buying activity towards the end of the session helped narrow the decline, the overall picture still showed negative breadth and cautious sentiment prevailing across the market.

The market experienced sharp fluctuations, but the VN-Index narrowly avoided a collapse at the last minute despite negative market breadth.

The trading session on November 21st witnessed significant fluctuations. In the first half of the afternoon, the VN-Index briefly fell below 1,640 points, losing more than 20 points compared to the reference level. However, buying pressure emerged at lower levels, pulling the index back up considerably, resulting in a close of only 1.06 points (-0.06%) at 1,654.93 points.

Liquidity remains a major drawback, with trading value on the HoSE reaching only 20,090 billion VND, a slight increase of 2% compared to yesterday, despite a more than 7% increase in matched order volume. Block trades contributed an additional 1,849 billion VND, but this was insufficient to improve the overall liquidity picture, which has remained in a persistently low level for several sessions.

Although the index only declined slightly, the underlying performance was far less positive. On the HOSE exchange, only 111 stocks rose while 204 declined. The VN30 basket also showed strong divergence with 17 stocks falling and only 9 rising, although the VN30-Index still managed to stay in positive territory thanks to the recovery of large-cap stocks at the end of the session.

This marks the third consecutive session of sideways movement and consolidation around the MA20 support level. After surpassing the 1,600-point mark last week, expectations of a breakout rally have yet to materialize as capital inflows have not returned sufficiently. Since the beginning of the week, even during the early session's nearly 20-point surge, trading volume has only reached approximately 21,000 billion VND – a modest level compared to periods of strong market activity.

Nevertheless, overall for the week, the VN-Index still increased by 19.47 points, equivalent to +1.19%, marking the second consecutive week of gains after the previous week's 2.27% increase.

The most negative highlight of the session came from the activity of foreign investors. After the previous day's technical net buying, foreign investors returned to strong net selling of VND 677 billion across the market, mainly concentrated in the financial and securities sectors.

The continued outflow of foreign capital is putting pressure on domestic investor sentiment, which was already cautious due to a lack of supportive macroeconomic information.

The focus of the recovery came from blue-chip stocks. While only STB in the VN30 basket managed to stay in positive territory by the end of the morning session, many large-cap stocks reversed course and rose by the close, including HPG, BCM,FPT , and the Vingroup trio (VIC, VRE, VHM).

- STB surged 3.64%, with trading volume exceeding 508 billion VND – leading the VN30 index.

- VJC rose 2.21%, marking the best recovery session in the airline sector.

- FPT increased by 1.82%, making a significant contribution to the index.

- VHM increased by 1.53%, VPL increased by 3.47%, VIC increased by 0.75%, and VRE increased by 0.63%.

The Vin Group became the most important support, significantly offsetting the decline in the banking sector, with stocks that took the most points away from the VN-Index today such as VCB (-0.67%), BID (-0.92%), TCB (-1.01%), HDB (-1.89%), and LPB (-1.52%).

Notably, 25 out of 30 stocks in the VN30 basket recovered from their intraday lows, with 11 recovering by more than 2%. Even stocks that had been in the red like MWG narrowed their losses to -1.23%.

The mid- and small-cap group continued to experience strong fluctuations: HQC hit the ceiling price (+6.8%) with nearly 30 million shares changing hands; HID, LGL, TMT, VTB, FIR, and HII also maintained their upward trend until the end of the session.

On the downside, several stocks faced strong pressure, such as HSL, which fell 6.5%; and VIX, which dropped 5.1%, with a trading volume of 67.5 million units, the highest in the entire market, and a nearly 10% decrease for the week.

In total, 90 stocks fell by more than 1%, accounting for 37.1% of the total trading value on the HoSE, indicating that selling pressure remains very strong across many stock groups.

The securities sector was the focus of negative performance: VIX fell 5.09%, with trading volume reaching VND 1,586 billion – the highest in 15 sessions; SSI fell 1.44%, VCI fell 2%, and VND fell 1.29%.

Despite the sharp decline, most of the remaining stocks in the group have low liquidity, indicating that the selling pressure was not a panic sell-off.

The banking sector also followed the same trend with widespread declines. However, the decrease was not significant, mostly below 2%. STB was a rare bright spot with an impressive increase.

Developments on HNX, UPCoM and derivatives:

- HNX-Index decreased by 1.1 points (-0.42%) to 263.13 points; CEO increased by 4%, with 15.9 million shares traded – the highest on the exchange.

- UPCoM-Index decreased by 0.82 points (-0.69%) to 118.69 points; MZG reversed its trend and rose 3.7% after at one point falling by more than 9%.

On the derivatives market, the VN30F2512 futures contract rose 2.9 points, reflecting expectations of a recovery in blue-chip stocks.

Source: https://thoibaonganhang.vn/luc-cau-cuoi-phien-cuu-vn-index-173945.html