Daily Market Watch 15/08/2025: Stronger Selling Pressures Weighed on Stock Prices

MARKET HIGHLIGHTS

o     The significant momentum from yesterday carried over in the morning sessions. Several large cap stocks moved up very strongly right from the open and provided a decent momentum to the whole market. However, profit taking surged and became stronger as investors found out several signals that made them concern including: (1) market breadth is narrower: most index gains were contributed by several stocks while numbers of decliners outpaced that of gainers, (2) foreign investors have increased their selling value in the last few days which would be a trouble to the market ahead, and (3) other potential risks such as tight margin lending balances and weaker currency still persisted.

o     The Index was weaker as a result, it retreated to the reference level and slightly down in early afternoon session. We saw many retail investors anticipated that a correction/consolidation may arrive soon  as the Index have moved up quite strongly in the past several days. Thus, they were more panic and sold aggressively in the last 30 minutes when market momentum slowed down. Many high-beta and small/mid-cap stocks faced notable pressures and tumbled. Retail investors were more panic as the usual afternoon recovery did not appear. The VN-Index closed at 1,630 points (-0.65%). Its intraday swing is even higher at -2.2%.

o      Market turnover edged higher to USD 2.27 bn (+12.4% DoD) as profit-taking sentiment strengthened. Foreign investors sold heavily with net outflows of USD 116.6 mn, bringing the month-to-date net sell value to USD 923 mn (including USD505mn from VIC). The largest net sales today were in HPG (-USD 26.9 mn), FPT (-USD 19.6 mn), and MBB (-USD 19.2 mn), while only light net buying was recorded in VIX (+USD 6.7 mn), VND (+USD 3.4 mn), and HCM (+USD 2.2 mn).

o      MSCI announced its Q2 2025 Index Rebalancing. The Index would add FPT, HCM and remove SJS in the coming quarter. FPT is included as its foreign room was widen to over 154 million shares (>10% floating) after an overwhelming net sell value of foreign investors year to date.