Stock market week 30. 3 - 3. 4, recorded large fluctuations with an amplitude of +/- 30 points around the 1,680 mark.
Cash flow spread widely, but still led by Vingroup, real estate and banking. The index still maintained the support zone of 1,680 points for most of the time. At the end of the week, VN-Index increased by 11.24 points (+0.67%) compared to the previous week and closed at 1,684.04 points.
Foreign investors again became a minus point when net selling for most of the past week, with a total value of thousands of billions of VND. Accumulated after 5 sessions, foreign investors net sold VND 1,025 billion across the market. The focus of last week's trading was Vin's stock, in which VPL code alone was net bought by foreign investors by nearly VND 4,000 billion.
Looking more broadly, from the beginning of the year, foreign investors have withdrawn more than VND 30,500 billion from the Vietnamese stock market, an increase of about 18% compared to the same period.
In 2025, foreign investors recorded a record net withdrawal of 135,000 billion VND. The main reason at that time was the sharp increase in the exchange rate due to the interest rate difference between USD and VND. This happened when the US implemented a monetary tightening policy, while Vietnam eased it.
Dr. Nguyen Duy Phuong, Director of DG Capital Investment Division, said that foreign capital net withdrawal does not simply come from exchange rate pressure, but is likely associated with the process of risk repositioning and capital allocation globally. In the current period, the escalating developments of the conflict in the Middle East are becoming the largest variable dominating sentiment in the global financial market.
As risks increase, foreign capital flows tend to slow down, as foreign investors often prioritize defensive strategies, maintain a higher proportion of cash, or switch to safe assets such as government bonds of developed countries.
Moreover, the net selling status of foreign investors is consistent with markets in the region, showing that this is a general trend, not a specific concern for the Vietnamese market.
In a newly released report, SGI Capital believes that the impact of the Middle East conflict will greatly depend on the duration and breadth of the war. For the Vietnamese market, SGI Capital has some points to note. Besides the story of tariffs, geopolitical risks in the Middle East are creating more pressure on the stock market.
In the first days of March, VN-Index reacted quite negatively to the conflict in Iran, although the proportion of direct trade with this region was not large. The main impact came from the upward momentum of energy prices, in the context that Vietnam is still significantly dependent on imports of crude oil, LPG and LNG from the Middle East.
Although the probability is not highly appreciated, in the event of conflict spreading and prolonging beyond control, it will cause defensive sentiment to overwhelm the market, prompting cash flow to leave risky assets, including stocks in emerging markets. The risk of foreign capital becoming more cautious in the short term," SGI Capital said.
Experts believe that the mid-term review of FTSE Russell (announced on April 7) is expected to be an important milestone for foreign capital to reverse direction. SSI Research assesses that Vietnam has a favorable position to overcome the mid-term review and move towards officially joining the FTSE Emerging basket in September.
Another advantage of the Vietnamese stock market in attracting foreign capital is the scale of market liquidity that has grown remarkably in recent years. Daily trading value regularly maintains around 1-2 billion USD, even at times up to over 3 billion USD. This figure is equivalent to many emerging markets in the region.
In addition, Vietnamese stocks have attractive valuations with a trailing P/E ratio of about 12 times, much lower than other emerging markets. Compared to global emerging market indices such as MSCI Emerging Markets Index with a P/E ratio of about 14-15 times, the valuation of the Vietnamese stock market is relatively cheap. Meanwhile, Vietnam's economic growth rate is maintained at a high level compared to countries in the region.
