The southern market extended losses on March 25 as the foreign sector sold oil and gas stocks.

PV Gas (GAS), the biggest share in terms of market capitalisation here, dived 6.7 percent, while PetroVietnam Drilling and Wells Service Corp (PVD) plummeted 6.6 percent. These two stocks were among the five sold most by foreign investors on the day, with net sells of 55 billion VND (2.6 million USD) for PVD and 17 billion VND (794,400 USD) for GAS.

The foreign sector also unloaded many stocks in the VN30 basket, including Masan Group (MSN), Hoa Phat Group (HPG), Hoang Anh Gia Lai Co (HAG), Saigon Securities Inc (SSI) and Sacombank (STB).

The benchmark VN-index edged down 1.15 percent to close the session at 560.93 points, while the VN30, the tracker of the top 30 shares by market value and liquidity, dropped 0.61 percent to end at 590.17 points.

Liquidity remained modest, with a total of 87.6 million shares worth 1.755 trillion VND (82 million USD) traded by the end of the session. FLC Group (FLC) was still the most active code with 13.5 million shares, but its price slipped 1.7 percent to settle at 11,600 VND (54 US cents) per share.

On the Hanoi Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index also went down 0.20 percent to finish the day at 83.15 points.

Trading declined as the market volume dropped 20 percent from the previous session, reaching 38.5 million shares while the trading value decreased 10 percent to 514.4 billion VND (24 million USD).

F.I.T. Investment Co (FIT) was the leading stock with 4.8 million shares exchanged, rallying 0.5 percent to close at 19,300 VND (90 US cents) each.

Foreign investors continued to be net sellers in the two markets, responsible for a combined net sell of 82.4 billion VND (nearly 4 million USD), and over 90 percent of the value was sold in HCM City.-VNA