HANOI: Vietnamese shares yesterday slightly improved, ending a two-day decline after the State Securities Commission (SSC) late Tuesday confirmed new regulations on settlement time for security transactions from next year.
The Viet Nam benchmark VN Index on the HCM Stock Exchange was up 0.3 per cent to finish at 562.64 points and the HNX Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange rose to 77.97 points, nearly unchanged from Tuesday value.
Late on Tuesday, the SSC announced that settlement time for security transactions would be shortened from three days (9am on T+3) to two days (4.30pm on T+2) from January 1, 2016.
The announcement was expected to help investors reduce interest to brokerage firms for borrowing their money to buy shares and improve the market trading liquidity, Nguyen Son, SSC’s Director of Market Development Department, said. However, some investors said that the reduction would be less useful as they would receive purchased shares at 4.30pm after the stock market is closed at 3pm.
“The SSC’s announcement only had a small boost on the national stock market as investors were cautious with both international and domestic economic conditions”, MB Securities JSC wrote in its report yesterday.
Investors were cautious as Japan and the US hoped to resolve the issues with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) during a four-day meeting held in Atlanta, US yesterday, Saigon Securities JSC reported, adding that could be the last chance for the TPP-involved countries to reach a final agreement this year.
As a result, leading stocks on the market made slight gains such as Vietcombank (VCB), Petrovietnam Gas Corp (GAS), the Bank for Investment and Development of Viet Nam (BID) and Ma San Group (MSN). VCB and GAS rose 0.2 per cent to VND42,900 and VND45,800, respectively; BID was up 0.9 per cent to VND23,700; MSN gained 0.7 per cent to VND74,000.
Securities companies yesterday fell 0.2 per cent as the new policy is expected to cut firms’ revenue from interest that investors must pay companies for borrowing money to buy shares. Large brokers such as Saigon Securities Inc (SSI), HCM City Securities Corp (HCM) and VNDirect Securities JSC (VND) lost their early gains and closed unchanged from Tuesday values.
Market trading yesterday was low with more than 114 million shares in volume and VND1.77 trillion ($78.7 million) in value, a decrease of 8.2 per cent from Tuesday. Among all listed companies, Hoang Huy Investment Services JSC (HHS) topped the market trading with more than 4.5 million shares and rose 3.1 per cent to VND16,500.
