Vietnam index ends with best gain so far this year
Vietnams stock index posted its strongest gains this year on Tuesday with all 19 shares rising as investors looked ahead to trade-boosting measures at the beginning of 2003."Sentiment is up, and signs of improvement are there as investors seek to buy shares for gains that they hope to reap next month," said a broker in Hanoi. "The trading volume is still thin but many buy orders were unmatched."
Buy orders totalling 127,000 shares were not unmatched at the end of the session, outnumbering the 11,600 shares in leftover sell orders.
Brokers said investors were optimistic that the new trading band of five percent, which market regulators planned to apply next month, would stir up trade on a market that has seen repeated drops since May.
Share prices are now confined to a three percent band.
The Vietnam Index jumped 2.39 percent, or 4.29 points, to close at 183.56, the highest increase this year.
Volume thinned to 79,300 shares, valued at 2.08 billion dong $135,417, from 84,200 shares on Monday.
Heavyweight Cable and Telecommunications Material Co. dominated the session with 12,800 shares traded, gaining 500 dong to end at 31,000 dong.
In addition, a deal involving 10,000 shares of Saigon Beverages joint Stock Co TRI was struck via direct negotiations at a price of 23,500 dong.
The session also saw foreign investors buying into three stocks BTC, Gilimex and Khahomex, though combined volume was puny at 1,900 shares.
on Monday, foreign investors bought into six shares for a total volume of 6,000 shares. Brokers said such actions could convince local investors to return to the market.
"In the next one month with one or two more shares listed and a wider band, we expect investors to trade more actively," said the first broker.
He said volume of 100,000 shares or more per session would be a sign of a market trending higher and that he expected the index would rise gradually by the end of the week.
Reuters
