After the August recovery, the stock market entered September with many intertwined variables such as interest rates, liquidity, foreign capital flows and the upgrade process.
The market recovery has not gone along with a clear improvement in cash flow. The average trading value in August reached 15,273 billion VND/session, down 3.63% and 27.68% lower than the 5-month average.
The most stressful period of the interest rate increase cycle may have passed, but the general level of interest rates is still high and there is not enough basis to expect a sharp decrease in the short term. In the opposite direction, the capital demand of the economy is still large when the high growth target puts credit on an important role in capital supply. Therefore, even when the interest rate increase cycle has passed the most stressful period, the possibility of rapid interest rate decrease is still a question without a clear answer.
Dr. Nguyen Duy Phuong, Senior Director of DG Capital Financial Analysis Division, said that in the short term, interest rates may move sideways or only slightly decrease. And the corresponding scenario is that VN-Index may continue to fluctuate in the range of 1,700 - 1,900 points. The index is difficult to fall deeply but also not easy to surpass the 1,900 point range to move to higher levels.
In the context that the macroeconomy is still heavily affected by external developments, brighter liquidity becomes a major expectation of the market in the last months of the year. Foreign capital flows, especially after Vietnam was officially transferred to the secondary emerging market group of FTSE Russell, are expected to create more momentum for cash flow.
According to the roadmap, Vietnamese stocks will be included in FTSE index sets in four phases, from September 2026 to September 2027, with an increasing proportion.
And before the upgrade, ETF funds will enter the portfolio restructuring phase with large trading scale in the week of September 14-18.
Rong Viet Securities Company (VDSC) estimates that Fubon ETF is expected to sell shares worth about 103.2 million USD, equivalent to approximately 28.9% of the current portfolio to restructure according to the new ratio.
In the opposite direction, the FTSE GEIS index fund may disburse about 10% of the new ratio, equivalent to 21.9 million USD, before the effective date (September 21) to minimize the impact on stock prices in the restructuring session.
VDSC assesses that the impact of restructuring activities will be different between each stock, depending on the trading order size compared to the average liquidity.
In general, the overall scale of capital flow of the restructuring phase does not have too much impact on the score if only considering the upgrade event.However, the impact direction is leaning towards the positive side more as net capital flow is still positive," VDSC assessed.
Besides ETF restructuring activities, VDSC also mentioned the developments of markets that were previously upgraded.Accordingly, in many markets, the effective month often records strong liquidity increases, more than 1.1-2.7 times higher than the 12-month average.However, this increase usually does not last after the event.
For Vietnam, liquidity in August 2026 is currently only equivalent to 0.59 times the 12-month average, showing that the room for increased trading is still large.VDSC believes that cash flow related to upgrades may be more concentrated in the ATC trading session on September 18.
Regarding the price movement after upgrades, VDSC said that the results in previous markets are not consistent.The increase before the event will determine most of the post-upgrade developments, as expectations may have been partially reflected in the price.
With the Vietnamese stock market, VN-Index has increased by 10.3% in the past 11 months, the highest increase in the group of markets compared. Therefore, the basic scenario of VDSC is that the index may continue to fluctuate and accumulate around the upgrade time. However, the trend may be more positive after the event if foreign capital returns to net buying status.
