In the last trading week of June, on the HOSE exchange, foreign investors net sold for 4 sessions and only net bought for 1 session. In total, foreign investors net sold more than 110.9 million units, with a total net selling value of 2,904.2 billion VND, an increase of 7% in volume and a sharp increase in value when the previous week only net sold nearly 40 billion VND.
Including June, foreign investors net sold more than 15 trillion VND on HOSE. Accumulated in the first half of 2026, foreign investors net sold nearly 80 trillion VND. Among them, VIC shares were the focus when foreign investors bought VIC shares with a scale of nearly 16 trillion VND and sold nearly 15,400 billion VND.
This figure continues the record net selling level in the past year, creating a trend that shows no signs of reversal. However, unlike the period before COVID-19, net selling by foreign investors is no longer a "nightmare" for many stocks.
The VN-Index still increased despite that strong net selling momentum. From continuously going sideways in the first year of the net selling streak, the index began to break through from April 2025 to conquer a series of historical milestones, with the peak being 1,900 points right at the beginning of 2026. This upward effort is mainly contributed by domestic cash flow.
However, the fact that foreign investors are continuously net selling is causing many investors to worry that the market lacks momentum, in the context of market liquidity weakening recently, which further exacerbates concerns about the market scenario losing support.
According to the views of many analysts, foreign investors are unlikely to return to strong and widespread net buying in the next 1-3 months, but it is not yet "absent" for a long time. Instead, foreign investors are likely to gradually shift to slower net selling, selective net buying, and then officially net buying systematically.
Looking at a general picture, it is easy to see that there is no clear synchronization on a large scale between foreign investors' transactions and stock movements. This reflects the narrowing of the influence of foreign investors in the Vietnamese stock market. Currently, foreign investors only hold about 12-13% of market capitalization, a record low.
According to SSI Research, the prolonged net selling trend of foreign investors stems from many reasons. Among them are concerns about domestic interest rate fluctuations, US government bond yields maintained at a high level and the trend of re-allocating international capital flows to markets that benefit more clearly from technology topics such as artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductors.
However, net selling by foreign investors does not mean a negative outlook for the Vietnamese market. On the contrary, this may reflect the strategic shift of global investment funds in the context of the world entering a new capital competition cycle.
In the short term, selling pressure from foreign investors may still continue. However, reality shows that market resistance is being significantly improved thanks to domestic cash flow. As the role of domestic investors is increasing, fluctuations from foreign capital withdrawals may no longer create strong shocks as before.
