The afternoon's trades doubled the morning with nearly 120 millionshares and fund certificates worth 2.1 trillion VND (99.5 million VND).
Only one of the three major shares which supported themarket in the morning sustained gains in the afternoon. PetroVietnam Gas(GAS) rose 1.21 percent to 83,500 VND (4 USD) a shares but dairy giantVinamilk (VNM) and Vietcombank (VCB) retreated to the reference prices.
Other blue chips lost ground, however, pushing the VN30(tracking the top 30 shares by market capitalisation and liquidity)down 0.87 percent at 670.43 points.
On the Hanoi StockExchange, the HNX-Index also closed down 0.67 percent at 89.44 points.The market volume totaled nearly 117 million shares worth over 1.52trillion VND (72 million USD).
The VN-Index gained 3.17percent during March while the HNX-Index on the Hanoi exchange alsorose 11.16 percent. From January-March, the VN-Index added anaccumulative 17.25 percent and the HNX-Index increased 31.66 percent,according to data of vietstock.vn.
Foreign investorsreturned as net buyers on March 31 after four weeks of net selling. Theypicked up a combined over 112 billion VND (5.3 million USD) worth ofshares on both stock exchanges.-VNA