A woman walks past a stock quotation board at a securities company in HCMC. Many investors rushed to pour money into small and medium stocks today, March 3 – PHOTO: THANH HOA

HCMC – Many investors rushed to pour money into small and medium stocks, leaving many of them flying high today, March 3, as they seemed to worry about the Hochiminh Stock Exchange’s plan to raise the minimum volume of shares that can be traded in an order from 100 to 1,000 to deal with its system overload.

Among speculative stocks, property group FLC stole the limelight of the market, as it soared to its upper limit and ranked second by liquidity on the southern bourse, with 21.6 million shares changing hands.

Aside from FLC, many other small stocks hit their ceiling prices, such as TSC, SJF, IDI, MCG, HAP. Meanwhile, despite not reaching the upper limits, real estate firm HQC, construction company ROS, and industrial park developer ITA also ended in positive territory and reported high matching volume of 11-15 million shares.

As for largecap stocks, lenders CTG, VPB, HDB, ACB, MSB, steelmaker HPG, and retailer VRE were good performers. Of them, MSB rose a sharp 6.6% to its intraday high. Other strong winners included industrial park developer BCM and real estate developer NVL.

Especially, steelmaker HPG reversed course to end higher and was the most actively traded stock on the southern bourse, with 22.3 million shares transacted.

Overall, the benchmark VN-Index rose 0.34 point, or 0.03% over the session earlier at 1,186.95, with 270 advancers and 168 decliners. Trading volume on the southern bourse improved 9.5% but value remained the same as that of the previous session, at more than 630 million shares and over VND15 trillion. Block deals contributed some VND1.5 trillion to the total value.

On the northern bourse, the HNX-Index expanded 6.16 points, or 2.48% against the previous session at 254.1, with 137 stocks increasing and 66 others dropping.