OTC market: investors make selective deals

Instead of buying any shares available on the market, investors on the OTC market are now keeping cautious about making deals, leading many share items to drop dramatically in price.

Analysts said that there were 1,230 share items available on the market, but only 40-50 share items were seeing regular transactions these days. Shares of enterprises in the fields of petroleum, banking, securities, insurance, real estate and rubber production prove to be the most wanted stocks.

Nguyen Ngoc Truong Chinh, Head of the OTC share brokerage division under ACB Securities Company, said that only 50 OTC share items had been witnessing successful transactions.

Huynh Hong Hanh, who has been acting as a securities broker for the last four years at the Nguyen Cong Tru market, gives investors a list of 100 OTC share items to choose from, saying that other items are not being traded any more.

Trinh Hoang Nam from the Saigon Securities Incorporated (SSI) said that many speculators had been crying as the shares they bought had become unsalable.

Phu My Fertiliser, Military Bank, Eximbank, EAB, Phuong Nam Bank, Dai Viet and Au Lac Securities, Dong Phu Rubber, and Saigon Thuong Tin real estate are all among the most wanted names in shares.

Many share items, which were once sold at very high levels, have seen their prices drop dramatically. Vinalogis shares are selling at VND25,000/share, Vinaconex 12 at VND25,000, Vietcom at VND18,000, Northwest Hydropower Plant at VND26,000, and Saigontel, VND12,000.

Dr Tran Hoang Ngan, Head of the Banking and Securities Faculty under the HCM City Economics University, said that this was a good sign for the stock market, as it showed that investors had more experience and knowledge when making investment decisions, and did not just make investments by ‘feeling’. Dr Ngan said that the companies issuing OTC shares must really be doing good business to make their shares salable.

Tran Cong Nam, a senior investor on SSI trading floor, said that the OTC market, though it had not been controlled strictly by management authorities, had its own rules of the game: bad quality commodities will be rejected.

Source: VNE