Trading exploded on the HCM Stock Exchange on Jan. 9 – driven largely by soaring trades in Sacombank (STB) shares and halting the recent decline of the VN-Index. However, stocks continued to slide on the Hanoi bourse due to weak demand.

On the HCM City exchange, the value of trades skyrocketed to nearly 2.6 trillion VND(125 billion USD), while volume reached a whopping 171 million shares.

Negotiated transactions accounted for 151 million shares, worth nearly 2.4 trillion VND (114 million USD) – and most of these were shares of STB, which saw trades totalling 2.34 trillion VND (111.4 million USD) and a volume of 148 million shares. Analysts reckoned these were unloaded by ANZ Bank and Refrigeration&Electrical Engineering Corporation (REE) as the negotiated sales were equivalent to amounts ANZ and REE had registered to sell.

Through order-matching, STB was also the most-active share in HCM City, with 3.5 million shares traded before they hit their ceiling price of VND16,800 per share.

The VN-Index ended four sessions of consecutive declines with a gain of 0.77 percent, closing the at 339.32 points. Advancers edge decliners by a margin of 110-91, with eight out of the 10 leading shares by capitalisation posting gains. Along with STB, real estate developer Vincom (VIC) also hit its ceiling price.

On the Hanoi Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index declined by 0.29 percent from the previous session to close at 55.27 points. Volume rose slightly to 22.3 million shares but the value of trades decreased by nearly 8 percent to just 158.5 billion VND (7.5 million USD). As in HCM City, however, advancers outnumbered decliners by a narrow margin of 101-91.

VNDirect Securities (VND) was the most-active share, with nearly 2.7 million traded, but the code lost 1.6 percent to close at 6,000 VND.

Foreign investors were net sellers in HCM City of shares worth a net of over 1.8 trillion VND (85.7 million USD), but they were net buyers on the Hanoi bourse, picking up a net of 2.8 billion VND (133,000 USD) worth of shares./.