Foreign trading activities are forecast to increase this year thanks to manysupporting factors, especially exchange-traded funds (ETFs), according to VietDragon Securities Company (VDSC).
In the past two years, the E1VFVN30 ETF and VNM US ETF were the two maincapital-attracting ETFs of the Vietnam stock market.
It is likely that E1VFVN30 will continue to attract cash flow from its two keyinvestors, Thailand and the Republic of Korea, because the interest rates inthese two countries are at low levels after the two local central banks maderate cuts last year, VDSC said.
Vietnam’s benchmark VN-Index increased by 7.8 percent in 2019, higher than theRoK's KOSPI, which only increased by 6.3 percent, and Thailand’s SET which roseby only 0.6 percent.
Foreign investors have been net buyers over the past two years, with most ofthe net buying activities taking place through put-through transactions.
The net selling of foreign investors has slowed down as the value droppedsharply from over 16 trillion VND (692.5 million USD) in 2018 to more than 1trillion VND in 2019. Foreign investors had even net bought 3 trillion VND inthe first four months of 2019 but then they became net sellers due to the tradetensions between the US and China.
It is expected that Kuwait will be upgraded from frontier market status toemerging market by the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) in May 2020.
Accordingly, the occupancy of Vietnamese shares in the MSCI Frontier 100 Indexwould increase to 30 percent, instead of only about 12.3 percent as currently.If so, the passive fund Ishares MSCI Frontier 100 ETF could buy in 86.5 millionUSD worth of Vietnamese shares, VDSC said.
The Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HOSE) introduce new indices that containforeign-ownership-capped shares in November last year, including VNDiamond,VNFin Select and VNFin Lead. According to Saigon Securities Company, many largefund management organisations such as SSIAM, VFM and VinaCapital all plan tolaunch ETFs based on new indexes implemented by HOSE.
The stock market is forecast to boom in the near future as foreigners are nowable to invest more in their preferred stocks, thus luring foreign capitalinflows into the Vietnamese market.
SSI Fund Management Company (SSIAM) is completing procedures to launch SSIAMVNFin Lead ETF, simulating the movement of financial stocks.
VietFund Management (VFM) is also preparing for the launch of its two new ETFsbased on the VNDiamond index.
Market experts also forecast that foreign capital inflows could improve in 2020thanks to a number of external factors, such as the cooling of US-China tradetensions and the divestment and equitisation process of State-owned enterprisesin 2020./.