Last week, the stock market had a record falling session, leaving many impressions on investors. The rapid decline in scores in a short period of time is a result of strong selling pressure from large investors and spreading to investors with a high margin ratio.
This event also reflects the risk of record high margin balance, leading to automatic clearing orders when prices drop sharply, causing hundreds of stocks to hit the floor, including blue-chips in the VN30.
margin's outstanding loans in the whole market as of the end of the third quarter of 2025 are estimated at nearly VND380,000 billion, up 26% compared to the previous quarter and 56% compared to the end of 2024. The increase in margin balance along with the average trading value in the third quarter increasing to a high of VND44,026 billion/session shows that deposit loan cash flow has contributed to promoting liquidity and maintaining the market's upward momentum.
This also means that when the market enters a period of adjustment, pressure from clearing activities can make the adjustment level stronger in the short term.
However, many experts believe that although margin's outstanding loans in the market have increased significantly compared to the previous period, it is necessary to recognize that this is happening in parallel with the strong capital increase cycle of securities companies.
Many enterprises in the industry have continuously issued additional shares, increased charter capital and expanded lending limits, helping to significantly improve the capacity to provide margin to investors. Thanks to that, although margin's use is high, the market has not yet experienced a widespread "Maring" situation like in previous hot periods.
In addition, with market adjustments in recent sessions, the decline in many stocks, although significant, is still not large enough to trigger large-scale margin calls or clearances. This reflects the relatively stability of the market and the fact that securities companies are controlling their deposit lending activities quite tightly.
However, one factor that needs special attention is that liquidity is showing signs of decline compared to a few weeks ago, showing that short-term cash flow is somewhat more cautious. In this context, if some large-cap stocks suddenly fall sharply, local disbursement pressure may spread and lead to negative fluctuations in the general index.
Returning to market developments, although the VN-Index has increased by 30% since the beginning of the year, the VN-Index has fluctuated strongly thanks to the great contribution of some leading stock groups such as Vingroup, Gelex or VietJet... The VN-Index therefore has a significant difference with the VN30 and many other indexes.
If this impact is ruled out, the index may be only below 1,400 points, showing that the market has a huge differentiation and many large stocks, although of good quality, are still out of the market increase trend.
In the current market context, the increase is clearly differentiated between industry groups. After a strong recovery period of some large-cap stocks, most of the remaining industries have not recorded a significant increase, and many stocks are still trading below the historical average valuation zone. This is especially true for groups such as construction materials, information technology and consumer goods, which are considered to have a good foundation, but have not attracted strong cash flow in recent times.
Dr. Nguyen Duy Phuong, Director of Strategic Investment at DG Capital, commented that with the current market adjustment, this could be an important accumulation period when cash flow tends to shift to stocks that have not increased in price, in order to seek new opportunities with more attractive valuations. This rotation not only helps raise the general valuation level of the market, but also contributes to creating the necessary balance before entering a new growth stage.
