The portfolio value of Viet Nam's first exchange-traded fund (ETF) VFMVN30 as of June 13 touched VND6.3 trillion (US$272 million), making it the largest domestic stock fund in the market. The VFVMVN30 ETF is currently approximately the scale of the UK-based FTSE Russell's exchange-traded fund FTSE Vietnam ETF, standing at about $291 million.
Established in 2014, VFMVN30 ETF is the first ETF managed by VietFund Management Joint Stock Co (VFM) with initial mobilised capital of VND202 billion.
The VFMVN30 ETF tracks the performance of the VN-30 Index, a basket of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation and liquidity on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE).
Despite its relatively young age, in recent years, VFMVN30 ETF has attracted strong capital inflows, especially in the early period of 2018 and early 2019. In 2018, VFMVN30 ETF issued fund certificates worth more than VND2 trillion and in the first half of this year, the fund continued to issue fund certificates worth VND2.2 trillion.
Noticeably, capital inflows poured into VFMVN30 ETF in early 2018 were mainly from Korean investors. Meanwhile, capital inflows in the first half of this year were contributed significantly by Thai investors.
With its scale, each time VFMVN30 ETF restructured its portfolio caused many disturbances for the market, which is previously seen in the portfolio restructuring of ETF funds such as VNM ETF and FTSE Vietnam ETF.
Besides holding a portfolio of stocks in the VN-30 basket, VFMVN30 ETF is also involved in the derivatives market. In April, VFVMVN30 held 4,620 VN30F1905 derivative contracts, equivalent to 2.83 per cent of the open interest (OI), the total number of open or outstanding options and futures contracts.
On June 13, the net asset value/share (NAV/share) of VFMVN30 ETF reached VND14,269 per fund certificate, almost the same as the beginning of the year.
Apart from VFMVN30 ETF, another active domestic ETF fund is SSIAM VNX50 the SSI Asset Management Co (SSIAM).