Informal stock market bustling again as listed market recovers
Source: 28-AUG-2008 Intellasia | Tien Phong | Vietnamnet
Aug 28, 2008 - 7:00:00 AM The strong recovery of the listed market has made the informal stock market warm up with a lot of successful transactions these days.

The trading floor of Indochina Securities Co on Nguyen Cong Tru street in District 1, HCM City is always very bustling in the afternoon with the informal stock market share transactions.

Last Friday was one of the busier days on the trading floor. A woman with a mobile phone in hand entered the floor and declared loudly: "MB wanted, 231 (23,100 dong per share)".

No one replied to the woman, because they were busy with their own affairs. The share item the woman was seeking was Military Bank shares. Suddenly, a man with a big bag appeared and responded to the woman just as loudly: "MB available, 231". That woman and another immediately approached the man, and each of them bought 10,000 shares.

Some minutes later, a young man, soaking wet from the rain, came in and asked two women sitting and working with calculators about MB prices. Without raising her head, one of the two women said: "233". The young man tried to bargain, but he finally agreed to buy 10,000 shares of MB at 23,300 dong/share.

A securities broker on the trading floor said: "Investors need to pay the security money of 20 million dong before negotiations. If they do not fulfil the deals after negotiations, they lose the security money. The minimum volume of shares in every transaction is 5,000."

The share items which are the main commodities now on the informal stock market are the shares of banks, insurers and consumer product companies. A broker said that he had not seen such bustling transactions as the last several days for a long time.

Truong Duy Khiem, Head of the Brokerage Division under ACB Securities Company, said that the demand for the informal stock market's shares has been increasing in recent days.

While waiting for the Hanoi Securities Trading Centre (HASTC) to put the informal stock market under control, securities companies are building up their informal stock market trading floors.

Several companies have built up lists of the informal stock market shares for investors to transact. The informal stock market trading floor of ACB Securities, for example, has 14 share items put into transactions, including shares of Eximbank, EAB Bank, Dinh Vu Steel, PNJ.

The prices of several informal stock market share items have increased again. On August 25, the prices of Eximbank shares were 28,500-29,500 dong/share, up by 3-4,000 dong/share compared to one week ago. MB prices have soared to 24,200-25,200 dong/share (+ 3-4,000/share), while PNB of Phuong Nam Bank to 14-15,000 dong/share (+1,000 dong/share), and Vietcombank to 48-50,000 dong/share (+4-5,000 dong/share).

Nguyen Mien Tuan, general director of Rong Viet Securities Company, said that the optimistic information about the national economy has helped recover the listed market, thus bringing about the bounce back of the informal stock market.

According to Sacombank Securities, shares of Dinh Vu Steel, VPBank, MB Bank, Eximbank, Bao Viet and PetroVietnam Finance Co are the most popular items. HAGL has also been attracting investors on the news that the company is going to list on the official bourse.