As the steel industry has become stagnant after bright days in 2021, prices for steel shares have dropped. 

Hoa Phat (HPG) fell to the floor price in the first trading session of October. However, demand for bottom fishing was relatively high as capitalization value lost $8 billion. The VN Index decreased by 46 points.

Closing the October 3 trading session, HPG price decreased by 6.84 percent to VND19,750 per share. This was the first time since December 2020 that the HPG price fell to below VND20,000 per share. This caused Long’s stock asset to fall by $110 million (VND2.6 trillion).

So far this year, HPG price has dropped by 54 percent, taking $1.6 billion in Long’s stock assets, according to Forbes, from $3.2 billion.

The stock market has seen price decreases of most stocks amid a slide around the world, a 40-year high inflation rate in the US, and a sharp increase of inflation rates in Europe to 10 percent in September.

After the Bank of England (BoE), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Central Bank of China (PBOC) sent tough signals to suppress the market, the world received bad news. Credit Suisse announced possible bankruptcy and that the number of credit default swaps (CDS) had skyrocketed.

For HPG, the situation has been worse for several months. Steel manufacturers have also reported poor business performance. TDS reported a loss for Q2, while Hoa Phat reported post-tax profit down by 50 percent compared with Q1.

However, some securities companies said the government’s plan to promote public investment to support economic growth, plus the central bank’s policy on curbing inflation and stabilizing the exchange rate, could be good news for the steel industry.

Other Vietnamese billionaires have also lost money since early April. According to Forbes, Vingroup chair Pham Nhat Vuong has seen assets fall from $6 billion to $4.2 billion. Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, Ho Hung Anh, Nguyen Dang Quang and Tran Ba Duong also saw their assets fall by $200 million to $500 million.

Duy Anh