Stocks, gold, dollar on increase

The Vietnam’s stock market continued to maintain upbeat sentiment on February 12 despite profit-taking pressure.
With several large-cap stocks, including VNM, VIC, MSN and VRE all soaring strongly, the Vietnam’s benchmark VN-Index climbed 11.44 points, or 1.24 percent, to close at 937.54 points. Among the index’s members, 180 were winners, 113 were losers and 54 were unchanged.
The HNX-Index of the smaller bourse in the north edged up 0.8 points, or 0.76 percent, to close at 106.04 points with 90 stocks increasing, 65 declining and 45 treading water.
Noticeably, foreign investors continued to net buy nearly VND80 billion in the market. Market liquidity also strongly improved compared to previous trading session.
Total trading volume on both trading floors touched 224.4 million shares, worth VND4.6 trillion.
The Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange has recently decided to put QCG stock of Quoc Cuong Gia Lai JSC into warning status starting from February 15 as the company violated the disclosure obligations in accordance with Clause 1.h and 1.i, Article 9 of Circular 155/2015/TT-BTC dated 10/06/2015 by the Ministry of Finance.
Earlier, HOSE had warned Quoc Cuong Gia Lai JSC for late disclosure of inside information of 14 transactions worth VND3.2 trillion carried out from 2013 to 2017. According to HOSE, late disclosure of information affects publicity and transparency of the market and the interest of investors.
On the same day, the State Bank of Vietnam listed reference exchange rate at VND22,905 per US dollar, an increase of VND10 per dollar compared to the previous day, to the highest level since the beginning of this year. Thus, the reference exchange rate has gained VND38 per dollar just within two days after Tet holidays. Although the reference exchange rate rose, the price of US dollars at commercial banks merely surged VND5 per dollar.
Meanwhile, the price of gold kept increasing prior the Day of the God of Wealth (the tenth day of the lunar New Year) to hover above VND37 million per tael (1.2 ounces).
Legend has it that the God of Wealth returns to heaven on the 10th day of the Lunar New Year, and so Vietnamese have a tradition of buying gold on that day to hope for good luck and prosperity throughout the year.

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