Hanoi (VNA) – The Vietnamese stock market had a tough timethroughout February with most stocks weakening amid concern about the global spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

The benchmark VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE) ended the month plummeting 5.81 percent to 882.19 points while VN-Allshareand VN30 Indexes dropped 2.97 percent and 1.96 percent, respectively, fromJanuary.

VN30 Index comprises 30 leadingcompanies in terms of market capitalisation and liquidity. The VNAllshareconsists of those in the VN100 and the VNSmallcap of companies with lowmarket capitalisation.

But the VN-Index was not among those hardest hit by the epidemicsince the US’s Dow Jones industrial average plunged more than 10 percent, theStock Exchange of Thailand (SET) Index down 11 percent and the Korea CompositeStock Price Index (KOSPI) 6 percent.

As of the end of February, there had been 383 stocks, three closed-endfund certificates, two ETFs, 63 guaranteed warrants, and 44 bonds listed on theHoSE. The number of shares listed on the southern bourse was 88.84 billionwhile the HoSE’s market capitalization totaled 3.016 quadrillion VND (nearly129.8 billion USD), down 5.8 percent from the previous month and equivalent to 54.5 percent of the GDP in 2018.

Market liquidity has improved with average trading value reaching 4.8trillion VND per session, up 34.2 percent, while trading volume picked up 24.06 percent to 253.8 million share.

According to the HoSE, net foreign selling in February was 2.73trillion VND. The shares traded by foreign investors were worth 29.3trillion VND, presenting 10.29 percent of the market’s total trading value. Topbuys included HDBank (HDB) (85.8 billion VND), sugar producer Thanh Thanh Cong –Bien Hoa JSC (SBT) (57.1 billion VND), Sacombank (STB) (38.9 billion VND), DigiworldCorporation (DGW) (34 billion VND) and Vinhomes (VHM) 33.4 billion VND)./.