New securities accounts lowest in 21 months

Hanoi - Domestic investors opened 88,479 new securities accounts in November, a slight decrease compared to the previous month, according to data from the Vietnam Securities Depository (VSD).

Of the estimate, individual investors opened 88,334 new accounts and institutional investors opened 145 new accounts. This was the lowest number of new accounts opened by domestic investors since February 2021 and the sixth consecutive month of decline.

As of the end of November, the number of individual investor accounts in the country exceeded 6.74 million, or about 6.7% of the population. In the first 11 months of this year, domestic individual investors have opened nearly 2.5 million new accounts, far exceeding the figures of all four years of 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 combined.

Although the number of new accounts opened by domestic investors continued to decline, market liquidity showed signs of recovery. According to statistics, the average match order value on HoSE in November was 9.85 trillion VND, a slight increase of nearly 6% compared to the previous month. The excitement continued to be maintained until the early days of December, with the matching value sometimes reaching the billion-dollar threshold.

The market continuously plummeted to a 2-year low in mid-November, causing the valuation of a series of blue-chips stocks to become incredibly cheap, which partly stimulated bottom-fishing demand. The cash flow massively poured into the market, especially from foreign investors, which is a significant driving force for Vietnamese stocks to rebound in November.

Last month, foreign investors net bought nearly 16 trillion VND via order matching channel on HoSE, a record number. The trend was still maintained in the early days of December when foreign investors continued to net buy nearly 6.4 trillion VND.

In November, foreign investors opened 216 new accounts, up 24% from the previous month. This is the second month in a row that the number of new accounts opened by foreign investors has increased. In terms of structure, individual investors opened 199 new accounts while institutional investors opened 17 new accounts in November. As of November 30, 2022, foreign investors had a total of 42,458 accounts.

Nguyen Duy Anh, head of Portfolio Management, Vietcombank Fund Management Company, said that it is impossible to expect that cash flow can return as strong as in the past 6 months to 1 year because during this period the deposit interest rates at banks have increased significantly compared to the previous period.

Huynh Minh Tuan, founder of FIDT Joint Stock Company, a securities expert, said the Government as well as businesses should work together to solve inadequacies such as bonds and real estate bonds to create confidence in the market.

Businesses must improve their financial management and pay more attention to the complete and timely disclosure of information to investors, thereby building confidence among investors.

VNDIRECT Securities Corporation has announced its enrollment into the $75 million offshore unsecured syndicated loan with the greenshoe option to increase the total limit up to $200 million from foreign financial institutions.

Securities firms are witnessing gloomy business results in the year to date due to unfavourable market developments.