Most large caps succumbed to strong selling pressure in the morning despite supporting news of crude oil price recovery and rebounding banking stocks. In the afternoon phase, sellers kept offloading blue chips while cash flow reduced before the Hung Kings’ Death Anniversary holiday on April 6.

However, petroleum, banking stocks and two beverage firms SAB and BHN helped the VN-Index move sideways during the afternoon trade. BHN went up to the ceiling price of VND83,400 a share while SAB closed at the intraday high of VND203,000 per share, albeit with modest trading volumes at around 20,000 shares each.

The VN30 basket saw up to 24 stocks losing while six others managed to rise, pushing the VN30-Index down a massive eight points, or 1.14%, at 691.07. Among gainers, VCB, CTG, GAS, MWG, NT2 and SBT only made modest increases.

Turnover on the HCMC market tumbled with nearly 218 million shares worth VND3.7 trillion changing hands, down 14% against the previous session. TTF was notable with over 13.5 million shares traded via bloc deals at the floor price with the total value of over VND100 billion.

FLC saw strong selling pressure after a three-day rising streak, dropping 2% to over VND8,200 a share with matching volume of 30.7 million shares. ITA made no improvement in the afternoon, plunging to the floor price of VND3,600 a share with over 26.2 million shares traded.

In the securities sector, HCM rose to an 18-month high, extending a 34% surge over the last four months after announcing plans to lift its foreign ownership limit to 100%. Meanwhile, SSI dropped 3.4% on news the brokerage plans to sell 10 million employee stock ownership (ESOP) shares this year.

On the Hanoi market, the HNX-Index also fell 0.46 point, or 0.5%, at 90.7 with turnover dropping to VND526 billion. Large caps made the most negative contribution to the northern index as up to 14 stocks in the HNX30 basket closed down.

KLF tumbled 7.7% at VND2,400 per share after closing at the reference price for seven sessions in a row. It took the lead for liquidity on the northern bourse with 5.6 million shares changing hands.

Meanwhile, ACB and SHB were among losers, falling 0.3% and 3.3%. The two lenders reported high trading volume of 4.3 million shares and 2.9 million shares respectively.