Vietnam’s shares end two-day downturn

Vietnamese shares on September 30 slightly improved, ending a two-day decline after the State Securities Commission (SSC) confirmed new regulations on settlement time for security transactions from next year.

The Vietnam benchmark VN Index on the HCM Stock Exchange was up 0.3 percent to finish at 562.64 points and the HNX Index on the Hanoi Stock Exchange rose to 77.97 points, nearly unchanged from the previous session’s value.

On late September 29, the SSC announced that settlement time for security transactions would be shortened from three days (9am on T+3) to two days (4.30pm on T+2) from January 1, 2016.

The announcement was expected to help investors reduce interest to brokerage firms for borrowing their money to buy shares and improve the market trading liquidity, Nguyen Son, SSC's Director of Market Development Department, said.

However, some investors said that the reduction would be less useful as they would receive purchased shares at 4.30pm after the stock market is closed at 3pm.

"The SSC's announcement only had a small boost on the national stock market as investors were cautious with both international and domestic economic conditions", MB Securities JSC wrote in its report on September 30.

Investors were cautious as Japan and the US hoped to resolve the issues with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) during a four-day meeting held in Atlanta, US yesterday, Saigon Securities JSC reported, adding that could be the last chance for the TPP-involved countries to reach a final agreement this year.

As a result, leading stocks on the market made slight gains such as Vietcombank (VCB), Petrovietnam Gas Corp (GAS), the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BID) and Ma San Group (MSN).

VCB and GAS rose 0.2 percent to 42,900 VND and 45,800 VND, respectively; BID was up 0.9 percent to 23,700 VND; MSN gained 0.7 percent to 74,000 VND.

Securities companies fell 0.2 percent on September 30 as the new policy is expected to cut firms' revenue from interest that investors must pay companies for borrowing money to buy shares.

Large brokers such as Saigon Securities Inc (SSI), HCM City Securities Corp (HCM) and VNDirect Securities JSC (VND) lost their early gains and closed unchanged from the previous session’s values.

Market trading was low with more than 114 million shares in volume and 1.77 trillion VND (78.7 million USD) in value on September 30, a decrease of 8.2 percent from a day earlier.

Among all listed companies, Hoang Huy Investment Services JSC (HHS) topped the market trading with more than 4.5 million shares and rose 3.1 percent to 16,500 VND.-VNA