Money flowing into the stock market has 'disappeared'.

Investors are adopting a strong defensive stance when the market lacks supporting factors. Photo: Phuong Lam .

The Vietnamese stock market continued to experience a volatile trading session on May 29th, with caution prevailing across the market. Although selling pressure wasn't particularly intense, the extremely cautious flow of capital caused the VN-Index to fluctuate almost exclusively around the reference level for most of the trading day.

The most notable aspect of today's session was liquidity, as the money flow continued to shrink sharply. The total value of matched orders across all three exchanges didn't even exceed 20,000 billion VND , falling to its lowest level since the beginning of 2016.

At the close of trading, the VN-Index edged down 0.18 points to 1,863.49 points. Meanwhile, the HNX-Index unexpectedly became a rare bright spot, surging 9.38 points (+3.3%) to 294.94 points, while the UPCoM-Index fell 0.51 points (-0.4%) to 125.12 points.

Market breadth continued to lean towards the negative side, with 409 stocks declining (including 23 hitting the floor price). Conversely, the market recorded 335 stocks rising (including 40 hitting the ceiling price) while as many as 809 stocks remained unchanged.

The VN30 basket, in particular, continued to face pressure from large-cap stocks. The index representing blue-chip stocks fell by more than 2 points to near 1,997 points, with 12 stocks declining, 12 stocks rising, and 6 stocks remaining unchanged.

The VN-Index fell for the third consecutive session. Photo: TradingView.

The main downward pressure on the VN-Index today was concentrated in the banking and real estate sectors. VHM (-1.1%), VPB (-0.7%), VCB (-1.3%), GEE (-5.3%), CRV (-6.6%), BID (-1.2%), LPB (-1.9%), MWG (-1.8%), MSN (-1.1%) and SSB (-3.1%).

Conversely, the energy sector became the focal point supporting the index as world oil prices maintained their upward trend. GAS closed at its ceiling price, becoming the strongest supporting stock for the VN-Index. BSR rose 4.4%, and PLX increased 3.9%, indicating that capital is trending towards sectors that directly benefit from global commodity price fluctuations.

Besides the oil and gas sector, the market still showed some individual bright spots such as MCH (+3.5%), TCX (+0.5%),ACB (+1%), BCM (+1.9%), STB (+0.2%), VPX (+0.4%), and VJC (+0.9%). However, the spread of these gains remained quite limited and insufficient to create momentum for the index to break through.

Foreign investors continued to be a significant drag on the market, maintaining a net selling position of approximately 800 billion VND across the entire market. Selling pressure was mainly concentrated in the banking sector, with CTG experiencing net selling of around 100 billion VND , VPB 65 billion VND , and ACB 57 billion VND .

On the buying side, the scale of disbursements by foreign investors remained quite modest. GAS was net bought for approximately 46 billion VND , while NVL and TPB were net bought for 30 billion VND and 23 billion VND respectively.