Foreign investors net sold over VND93 trillion (US$3.7 billion) on the Vietnamese stock market in 2024, a fourfold increase over 2023 and the largest-ever sale in history, according to Fiintrade, a trading information and analytics platform.

The record sale resulted from frontier markets, including Vietnam, and emerging markets being less attractive than developed peers.

Of the total, some VND90 trillion ($3.5 billion) was net sold by foreign investors on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange (HoSE).

Foreign investors net sold a total of VND167.2 trillion ($6.6 billion) in 2019-24, nearly double their net purchases in 2007-19.

The net buying value did not include the value of transactions via private placements and public offerings of listed companies.

As a result, foreign investors’ ownership rate of domestic shares fell to the lowest level in the past 10 years, reaching 12.8 percent, on December 31. The rate was 16.8 percent on HoSE alone.

At the beginning of February 2020, the rate stood at 21 percent on HoSE.

The director of analysis at a securities company told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that foreign investors preferred large-cap stocks. Therefore, their net selling has put pressure on these stocks.

Vietnam remains a frontier market and needs to upgrade to a secondary emerging market to attract more large foreign investors, the director noted.

In 2024, sectors experiencing the most significant net selling by foreign investors included real estate, banking, food, steel, securities, and information technology.

Meanwhile, foreign investors’ net purchases concentrated in retail, logistics, maintenance, waterway transport, paper, and water.

Although foreign net selling has slowed down over the past few months, it has not shown signs of reversing.

Foreign investors have continued net selling in the first sessions in 2025, but many securities companies have forecast that foreign indirect investment channeled into the Vietnamese stock market will improve, especially in the second half of this year.

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