After struggling to add modest gains yesterday morning, shares lost ground in the afternoon session, as money poured into other channels.

Gold prices yesterday hit their highest level in a year, following a slight increase on the international market overnight.

At around 2pm as the markets were preparing to close, Sai Gon Jewelry Co Ltd posted the SJC gold price at VND48.13-48.15 million per tael, an increase of around VND330,000 compared to Wednesday afternoon (one tael equals 1.2 ounces). Notably, the price increased dramatically in just a few minutes.

The gap between domestic and world prices has not narrowed, despite efforts by SJC to reprocess damaged gold bullion and non-SJC gold to provide to the market.

According to Nguyen Hoang Minh, deputy director of the State Bank's HCM City Branch, 45,000 taels of gold of the 350,000 taels that SJC was told to process were completed as of Tuesday.
On the HCM City Stock Exchange, the VN-Index fell 0.22 per cent to 384.51 points.
Only 68 out of the 229 listed codes managed to post gains. Among those were four of the 30 largest stocks in terms of capitalisation and liquidity tracked by the VN30, but more than two-thirds of the major stocks failed to follow the same trend.

The VN30 declined 0.18 per cent to 449.62 points.

Market value was down 36 per cent on the previous day at VND362.3 billion ($17.2 million), with around 26 million shares changing hands.

On the Ha Noi Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index finished at 54.17 points, a 0.04 per cent drop.
Market sentiment was negative, with only 73 shares advancing, while 101 declined and 220 closed unchanged.

Trading value was meagre, dropping 23.4 per cent compared to Wednesday's figure to just VND110.17 billion ($5.2 million) on a volume of 14.4 million shares. The HNX30, representing the Ha Noi bourse's top shares, lost 0.4 per cent to close at 100.30 points