The stock market closed 2025 with an impressive increase of more than 500 points, equivalent to an increase of 40.87%. This growth rate far exceeded 2021 (up 35.73%) and is only behind 2017 (up 44.03%).
Not only increasing sharply in points, the market in 2025 also recorded a breakthrough in liquidity when witnessing sessions with a total trading value of about 50,000 billion VND. For the whole year, market liquidity recorded 33% compared to 2024 and is a record high.
However, foreign capital continued to establish a strong net selling year. For the whole year 2025, foreign investors net sold for 9 months and net bought for 3 months.
In total, this block net sold 2.92 billion shares, with a total net selling value of up to 134,788 billion VND, slightly down 6.4% in volume but up more than 46% in value compared to the record record recorded in 2024 of net selling of 92,294 billion VND.
In which, the technology group's large stock, FPT, led the list with strong net selling with a value of more than 11,648 billion VND. A series of other bluechip codes were net sold for trillions of VND, such as VCB being net sold for 8,839 billion VND, STB being net sold for nearly 7,600 billion VND, SSI being net sold for 6,655 billion VND,...
Conversely, the stock with the strongest net buying was VPL with a value of 1,495 billion VND, however, NVL led the list with the strongest net buying in volume, reaching more than 84.6 million units, corresponding to a total net buying value of 1,270 billion VND.
2026 is assessed by analysts as possibly a pivotal year for the market, when reforms in infrastructure, policies and capital flow simultaneously have an impact. It is rare for the Vietnamese stock market to face a "set of drivers" simultaneously in terms of both technology, institutions and cash flow as in the coming period.
One of the factors that investors are most interested in is the market upgrade roadmap. Citing information from FTSE Russell, Vietnam has been informed that it may be upgraded from a frontier market to a secondary emerging market, with a projected time from September 2026, if it passes the mid-term review in March 2026. The upgrade is linked to key criteria such as the accessibility of foreign investors, the quality of transaction infrastructure, payment - compensation mechanisms and level of information transparency.
In parallel with the upgrade story, the KRX trading system officially went into operation from May 2025, and is expected to continue to be effective in the coming time. The KRX system opens up the ability to deploy many new nghiep vu such as daily trading (T+0), short selling, shortening payment times and developing derivative products and options.
These improvements not only help the market operate more effectively, but also bring Vietnamese stocks closer to international standards, thereby significantly improving attractiveness in the eyes of global investors.
Analysts at ABS Securities Company estimate that if the upgrade process takes place on schedule, the market may attract about 800 million USD from passive funds according to the FTSE index, along with 4-6 billion USD from active funds.
Not only stopping at the cash flow factor, the upgrade can also lead to the "revaluation" of many listed companies, thanks to improved liquidity and increased interest from global institutional investors.
At the same time, the IPO wave in the securities industry in the period 2026 - 2027 is expected to continue to be vibrant, thanks to expectations of upgrading, complete legal framework and relatively favorable interest rate environment.
Combining the above factors, many experts believe that market upgrades, KRX fully operating, along with the race to increase capital and IPO are creating a rare dynamic cycle for the securities industry.
If key conditions are met on schedule, the Vietnamese capital market will not only strongly attract foreign capital flows, but also have the opportunity to restructure in a more professional direction, laying the foundation for a new development cycle in the period 2026 - 2027.
