A trader watches stock movements on his PC. — VNA/VNS Photo

In the first half of 2022, Vietnam's stock market moved negatively following the fluctuation of global markets influenced by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, price manipulation cases, and soaring inflation.

On the stock market, the benchmark VN-Index has decreased 20.07 per cent compared to the end of last year.

VFMVN Diamond ETF recorded the best performance in the market despite a negative rate of return of 3.6 per cent. In May alone, VFMVN Diamond ETF issued nearly 113 million fund certificates, net withdrawing VND3 trillion (US$128.5 million), 66 times higher than the same period and 78 per cent higher than the figure of the first four months of the year. The trading session on May 31 recorded the strongest amount of capital with 43.4 million fund certificates, equivalent to VND112.6 billion.

ETFs using the VN30-Index as a reference such as VFM VN30 recorded a rate of return of negative 18.3 per cent, SSIAM VN30 negative 18.8 per cent, MAFMVN30 ETF negative 18.5 per cent because the VN30-Index recorded a negative performance of nearly 18.7 per cent in the second half of this year.

VanEck Vietnam ETF was the worst-performing funds with a negative rate of return of 31.9 per cent, one and a half times higher than VN-Index's 20.7 per cent drop so far this year. The size of the fund is nearly $378 million, of which three companies of Vingroup (VIC), Vinhomes (VHM) and Hoa Phat Group (HPG) account for the largest proportion. In terms of price, shares of VIC decreased by 22.7 per cent, VHM decreased by 22.1 per cent and HPG decreased by 36.5 per cent compared to the beginning of this year. The investment efficiency of the remaining ETFs was negative on average 22-27 per cent.

Among active investment funds, Vietnam Holding recorded a rate of return higher than the overall market at negative 16 per cent. The remaining active investment funds all have negative investment rates of about 20 per cent, equivalent to the decrease of the VN-Index.

Dragon Capital's $2-billion fund - Vietnam Enterprise Investment Limited (VEIL) recorded a negative yield of 20.1 per cent. Most of the stocks in the top 10 of the fund’s portfolio fell sharply such as Hoa Phat Group (HPG), VPBank (VPB) and Asia Commercial Bank (ACB). Similar to VEIL, PYN Elite Fund had a performance of negative 20 per cent. The Finland fund recorded negative investment performance for five consecutive months.

The top 3 stocks in PYN Elite Fund's portfolio such as Vinhomes (VHM), Vietinbank (CTG), and Vincom Retail (VRE) have all recorded a decline in prices since the beginning of this year. The banking group alone accounted for 36.8 per cent of the PYN fund portfolio, including Vietinbank (CTG), HDBank (HDB), Military Bank (MBB), and Tien Phong Bank (TPB), all of which saw prices down by over 20 per cent, of which TPB dropped the most with nearly 34 per cent.

According to VNDirect Research, the Vietnamese stock market corrected like most other emerging markets in the first six months of this year, bringing the VN-Index to trade at almost the lowest level in the past five years.

As of June 23, 2022, VN-Index was trading at the current share's price/earnings ratio (P/E) of 12.9x, which is 25 per cent down from this year's peak and 22 per cent down from the average P/E in the last five months. However, Vietnam is still standing out from other emerging markets due to its high P/E growth in the 2022-2024 period, at an average of 19.2 per cent. 

Source: Vietnam News