Bank stocks stall as the market continues broad-based correction

Money flow into bank stocks, especially state-owned banks, suddenly slowed in the morning session. The banking group within the VN30 basket recorded a sharp liquidity drop of 64%, and all stocks in this group on HoSE fell 63% compared with yesterday morning. Top-performing stocks faltered this morning. VN-Index closed the session down 0.43% (-7.95 points) with a very narrow breadth of 92 gainers to 195 losers. The index peaked at 10:03 a.m. rising 0.62% (+8.56 points), but breadth was only 120 advancers to 125 decliners. The downside followed as the leading stocks tired. The state-owned banks group weakened quickly. VCB fell as much as 2.22% from the intraday high in the latter half of the session, closing 1.91% below the reference. BID fell 1.56%, ending 1.44% lower. CTG fell 1.54%, ending 0.99% lower. One reason prices could not sustain strength was the sudden drop in liquidity. VCB's liquidity fell 80% vs yesterday morning. BID fell 86%, CTG fell 88%. Such a sudden liquidity decline can only be explained by large capital decisively stopping. The price support thus lacked strength, while selling pressure wasn't really strong. About 30% of VCB liquidity concentrated before 9:45 a.m., possibly the most bullish demand and in line with the momentum of the previous session. BID, CTG weakened even earlier. The remaining leading blue-chips also were not strong: VHM plunged -3.36% after attempting to reach historic high yesterday but failed. VIC faced heavy selling pressure after around 10 a.m. and closed the session up only 0.84%, while at the peak it rose as much as 3.45% versus the reference. Among the large caps, only CTG rose 2.55%, GAS up 1.42% is notable. Yet the Top 10 by market cap had 7 stocks down, reducing momentum. Moreover, the VN30 Index's entire constituents retreated, with 20 stocks down more than 1% from their high. VN30-Index closed the morning down 0.34% with 8 gainers and 19 losers, where declines were broad, with 8 stocks down more than 1%. Liquidity of this basket dropped 39% vs yesterday morning. If bank trades are excluded, the rest of the basket saw liquidity rise about 5%. Thus money flow has returned to normal levels before the spike in bank stocks. With the rest of the market, liquidity showed a modest improvement. Specifically, total turnover on HoSE excluding banks rose about 17% vs yesterday morning. However overall breadth still confirms stronger selling pressure as 2.1 red stocks for every 1 green. Furthermore, 42.2% of stocks that had trades experienced price declines of 1% or more. Most of these were under pressure even in red markets. HoSE had 88 stocks down more than 1% versus reference, mainly in mid and small caps. Although declines were deep, liquidity was not abundant: NVL fell 2.34% with 214.9 billion traded; VIX -1.48% with 120.1 billion; DCM -3% with 89.8 billion; GEX -1.64% with 77.6 billion; DPM -2.04% with 70.1 billion were the most traded. On the plus side, few stocks could sustain clear gains, partly due to weak liquidity. Only 10 stocks on the entire market had liquidity over 10 billion with gains over 1%. The lead with traditional blue-chips were TCB, PLX, GAS, VRE, GVR. Others: GMD +1.35%, CTR +1.16%, DPG +1.31%, VTP +1.75%, DPR +1.48%. Foreign investors this morning also suddenly reduced net purchases to the lowest in 5 weeks at 698 billion on HoSE. Net position -802.6 billion with notable selling: FPT -177.9 billion, VHM -83.9 billion, VCB -83.5 billion, ACB -72.1 billion, VNM -67.4 billion, MWG -50.3 billion. On the buying side: VIC +33.3 billion, TCB +32.8 billion, MBB +25.5 billion, VPI +25 billion.