The Saigon Times

An employee of a local securities firm monitors stock movements – PHOTO: THANH HOA

HCMC - The strong cash flow helped the VN-Index of the Hochiminh Stock Exchange maintain growth momentum today, November 27, and reach 1,010.22 points, the highest since the beginning of this year.

With winners outnumbering losers by 251 to 167, the main index added 4.25 points, or 0.42%, from the session earlier. The southern market saw 446.44 million shares worth VND9.87 trillion changing hands, declining by 9.54% in volume and 4.12% in value compared with the previous session. Some 64.71 million shares worth over VND1.92 trillion were traded in block deals.

One of the biggest gainers was lender HDB, which shot up to the ceiling price at VND21,450, after it closed the shareholder list to pay cash dividend. Construction material producer CVT also shot up to the ceiling price at VND51,500 for the ninth straight session.

Other major contributors were steelmaker HPG, lender MBB and mobile phone retailer MWG, soaring by 3.28% to VND36,250, 2.56% to VND20,000 and 2.4% to VND115,500, respectively.

Petroleum stock GAS, lender VCB and property firm VHM reversed course to increase slightly.

Only a few bluechips such as lender BID, retailer VRE, brewery SAB and dairy producer VNM lost ground, but by less than 1%.

Electricity firm POW surged by 3.7% to VND10,250 and took the lead on the southern bourse with over 19.54 million shares transacted.

While the VN-Index continued to fly high, the HNX-Index of the Hanoi Stock Exchange lost 0.15%, or 0.23 point against the previous session, to close the day at 148.17 points, with 82 winning stocks and 72 losing ones. There were 50.96 million shares worth VND740.82 billion traded on the northern bourse.

Bank stocks performed poorly, with ACB, NVB and SHB falling by 0.73% to VND27,200, 1.17% to VND8,400 and 0.6% to VND17,000, respectively.

Other large-cap stocks that ended in the red included PVS, PVB, CEO, VCS and TNG.

Speculative stock ART led the northern market by liquidity with 6.32 million shares changing hands. Lender ACB came second with 5.46 million shares traded.