According to FTSE Russell, after the upgrading announcement, they will closely monitor developments and record feedback from stakeholders before the assessment in March 2026, to ensure the official upgrading plan can take place after half a year. The detailed roadmap will be announced by this organization in the March 2026 assessment. This is a common standard process of FTSE Russell. This is to determine whether Vietnam has achieved enough, as well as maintain progress in facilitating access for global brokerage companies. This is very necessary to support the simulation of indicators and meet the needs of the international investor community.
The upgrading of the Vietnamese stock market to a secondary emerging market is the beginning of a new development phase, requiring deeper and broader reform to achieve long-term goals in the future.
Putting Vietnam in major indicators
Mr. Nguyen Thanh Lam, Director of Research and Analysis of the MSVN Individual Customer sector, assessed that Vietnam being upgraded to FTSE's Emerging Market will certainly lead to significant capital flows into the market. According to the mechanism, the upgrade will automatically put Vietnam in major indexes such as FTSE All-World, FTSE EM and FTSE Asia, forcing passive funds ( Passive Funds) based on these indexes to buy Vietnamese stocks or ETFs. FTSE-based funds alone will also create a mandatory buying force. At the same time, the interest of the active fund (Active Funds) is also very large.
Analysts at ACB Securities Company (ACBS) estimate that it can attract from 600 million USD - 1.5 billion USD, the largest of which is Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF - the largest fund currently trading under the FTSE Emerging Index - managing about 100 billion USD. With the allocation rate to the Vietnamese market being about 0.6%, Vanguard's capital flow could reach 600 million USD. If the entire FTSE EM and FTSE Asia check-in passive fund is included, this figure could reach 1.5 billion USD. However, the effective date for the Vietnamese stock market to be officially included in the ETF is September 2026.
ACBS commented that after the upgrade, Vietnam is included in the list of interests of hundreds of active investment funds with investment criteria in emerging markets, this capital flow is more stable and long-term, focusing on enterprises with prospects for positive business results, transparent information, and good governance. The favorite taste of active investment funds is often banking stocks, retail consumption, infrastructure, technology, etc.
Pressure after upgrading
Experts from KBSV Securities Company also expressed the view that the pressure of selling a listed net may occur in the short term (expected after the date of announcement of the upgrade) in the Vietnamese stock market. This phenomenon occurs due to the compulsory divestment mechanism (exit mandatate) from border market monitoring funds. According to the passive fund principle, these funds must sell Vietnamese stocks because the country is no longer in the Frontier Market index that the fund is monitoring.
According to KBSV, this temporary net selling is expected to quickly reverse as larger passive and active capital flows, referring to the Emerging Market index, begin to participate in disbursement before and after the official upgrade time.
Regarding the impact on market developments, from observing some cases that have been upgraded before, the analysis team found that this factor often had a quite positive impact on market developments in the stages before the announcement of the upgrade and before being officially upgraded.
However, after the announcement of the upgrade, the market often tends to adjust due to investors' profit-taking moves when expectations are met. The level of regulation of the beat then depends on changes in the macro environment when new information appears.
Moving towards MSCI
The biggest question asked by investors is, what will we continue to do after the Vietnamese stock market is upgraded? The next step after being upgraded to an emerging market by FTSE will be to be upgraded to an emerging market according to MSCI's classification. The upgrade is just the beginning, the important thing is to compete fairly at FTSE and move towards MSCI.
Currently, Vietnam is not yet on the watch list (Watchlist) of MSCI Emerging. In terms of criteria for upgrading MSCI, Vietnam has only met more than half of the criteria (which are more strict than FTSE). In the best scenario, even if MSCI includes Vietnam on the monitoring list for the next classification in June 2026, the most feasible upgrade target will be from 2028 - 2030.
