After making headway in the morning thanks to the rise of two aviation stocks VJC and HVN, the local stock market entered the afternoon phase on increasingly cautious sentiment, still with the VN-Index moving upward steadily to stay above 960 points.

However, largecap stocks then underwent increased selling pressure and reversed course to end lower. Consequently, the main index lost 0.09 point, or 0.01% against the previous session to settle at 951.9, with 227 stocks rising and 203 declining.

Trading volume and value on the southern bourse expanded 16% and 21% respectively at over 456 million shares and VND9.5 trillion, including more than VND1.2 trillion worth of shares traded in put-through deals.

Of the top ten stocks by market capitalization, eight finished lower with slight falls between 0.7% and 1.3%. Other losers were lenders TCB, VPB, MBB, STB and tech firm FPT.

Meanwhile, low-cost airline VJC soared as much as 7% to hit its ceiling price of VND103,400 and national flag carrier HVN inched 5.8% higher to VND27,500. Both of them helped the main index avoid a steep fall.

Stocks bucking the market downward trend also included retailer VRE which gained 2.3%, gas firm GAS and securities firm SSI up 1.1% each. Besides, property developer NVL and lender BID made small gains.

The majority of speculative stocks closed in red, such as FLC, HSG, GEX, DXG. Notably, property developer FLC, which plunged a sharp 6%, led the southern bourse by liquidity with 42.8 million shares traded.

On the northern bourse, strong selling pressure dragged down the HNX-Index by 0.27% versus Monday to close at 141.37 points.