The market downtrend shows no sign of abating as stocks continued to plunge this morning on both exchanges.

The VN-Index on the HCM City Stock Exchange slid to 378.49 points, off 0.84 per cent from Friday's close.

Blue chips led the fall as the top 30 shares on the bourse lost 0.91 per cent to stand at 445.62 points.

Investment dried up with just 13 million shares, worth VND149 billion (US$7.1 million), changing hands.

Only two codes had trades of more than 1 million shares, including Bac Giang Exploitable and Processing (BGM), with 1.4 million shares traded, and wood processor Duc Long Gia Lai Group (DLG) with over 1.2 million shares exchanged. BGM closed flat at VND4,700 a share while DLG rose 2.86 per cent to VND3,600 each.

On the Ha Noi Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index also gave up 0.45 per cent to finish this morning at 51 points on a low turnover of VND55.2 billion ($2.6 million).
Sai Gon-Ha Noi Bank (SHB) was the most active code on trades of 2.6 million shares changing hands, closing off more than 2 per cent to VND4,700 a share,
Trading was due to resume at 1pm.