The market's downward trend on low volumes showed no sign of abating yesterday as stocks continued to plunge on both exchanges.

The benchmark VN-Index on the HCM City Stock Exchange slid to 377.90 points, off 1 per cent from Friday's close, with twice as many losers as gainers.

Blue chips led the fall as the top 30 shares on the bourse lost more than 1 per cent to stand at 445.62 points. Among the top 30, only real estate firm Hoang Anh Gia Lai Co (HAG), confectionery company Kinh Do Corp (KDC) and Sacombank (STB) rose slightly from 0.3-1 per cent.

Investment dried up as the trading value dropped 23 per cent from Friday's value, totalling just VND260.3 billion (US$12.5 million).

Only two codes had trades of more than 1 million shares, including Bac Giang Exploitable and Processing (BGM), with 1.78 million shares traded, and wood processor Duc Long Gia Lai Group (DLG) with 1.26 million shares exchanged. Both shares closed flat at VND4,700 and VND3,500 a share respectively.

According to market insiders, money stays out of the market because investors see no signs of recovery, particularly since the Government asked State-owned corporations to divest capital from non-core businesses.

Late last week, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung approved the scheme to restructure Electricity of Viet Nam (EVN). Following that the corporation will withdraw its investment in companies whose business is not in line with EVN's.

On the Ha Noi Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index also gave up 0.53 per cent to finish yesterday's session at 50.96 points on a turnover of just VND112 billion ($5.4 million).
Sai Gon-Ha Noi Bank (SHB) was the most active code on trades totalling 3.27 million shares, closing unchanged at VND4,800 a share.

"Although there is still a possibility of a further retreat, we believe the short term investment opportunities are coming soon," Bao Viet Securities Co analysts said.

They reported important bottom-forming signals, following a long and deep decline. Thus they advised investors to balance the proportion of stocks that was enough to take advantage of a market rally while still managing risk if the market showed further decline in the current phase.