An employee at Vietcombank's office in Ha Noi. The bank shares climbed over 4.9 per cent, leading the market's uptrend. — VNA/VNS Photo Tran Viet

Benchmark indices rose more than 3.5 per cent on Monday, as domestic investors' risk appetite improved strongly while foreign investors continued to pour capital into the country's stock market.

The VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE) extended last week's big rallies and broke over the key level of 1,000 points for the first time in nearly a month.

Accordingly, the index surged 34.23 points, or 3.52 per cent, to 1,005.69 points, the highest since November 4. Meanwhile, the HNX-Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange (HNX) jumped 7.29 points, or 3.7 per cent, to 204.06 points.

The market's breadth was in a positive zone, with 491 stocks edging higher on the two main exchanges, while only 74 ticker symbols slid.

Liquidity also increased sharply over the previous session, with total trading value on both main exchanges of nearly VND17.3 trillion (US$697.4 million). Matching value on the southern bourse increased by 66.67 per cent compared to Friday's session to nearly VND14 trillion, equal to a matching volume of 872 million shares.

Similarly, on HNX, the matching value reached VND927 billion, equivalent to the trading volume of 77.5 million shares.

The rallies were driven by large-cap stocks in appealing industries, including banking, realty, manufacturing and utilities. The 30 biggest stocks tracker VN30-Index ended the day at 1,004.34 points, up 36.85 points, or 3.81 per cent.

In the VN30 basket, 23 stocks went up with seven stocks registering the maximum daily rise of 7 per cent, while only five stocks inched down. And two stocks stayed flat.

Statistics from finance website vietstock.vn showed that in top three stocks influencing the uptrend, Vietcombank was the market's leader with an increase of 4.92 per cent, followed by PV Gas (GAS) and Vinhomes (HMX), which both advanced by 7 per cent.

Supporting the market, other pillar stocks like Vietinbank (CTG), Hoa Phat Group (HPG), Techcombank (TCB), MBBank (MBB), Masan Group (MSN), Vincom Retail (VRE), Petrolimex (PLX) and VPBank (VPB), also reported positive performance, up at least 3.4 per cent.

The uptrend also received support from foreign investors, as they net bought for 16 consecutive sessions. Specifically, they net bought nearly VND1.7 trillion on the southern market, and VND16.27 billion on HNX. — VNS