Retail Crowd Dump Vietnam Stocks for Near 10% Bank-Deposit Rates

Resumen detallado

Vietnam’s retail investors are dumping equities and buying high-yielding notes from banks to capture interest rates nearing 10%, as locals and foreigners fall out of favor with the poor-performing stock market.

(Bloomberg) -- Vietnam’s retail investors are dumping equities and buying high-yielding notes from banks to capture interest rates nearing 10%, as locals and foreigners fall out of favor with the poor-performing stock market.

Banks lifted deposit rates in recent months to compete for funding, sucking in a swathe of the country’s 14 million retail investors to a financial product long considered out of fashion. The move came as the roughly $392 billion equity market dropped about 3% in 2026, on course for its first annual loss in four years.

Vietnam’s economy is growing at the fastest pace since the global pandemic as an expansion in credit buffers profitability at the largest banks. Still, persistent selling of equities by oversees money managers and local individual investors preferring the safety of high returning bank notes has left the benchmark stock index about 24% below its price-earnings multiple of the past five years.

For now, that’s not cheap enough to tempt back investors who’ve been stung by the falls, like Trung Nguyen, a 47-year-old Hanoi resident.

“This market is truly terrifying,” he said, after shifting his remaining savings into bank deposits following a year of losses. The more he traded, he said, the more money he lost. “With a few hundred million dong left, for now, I’m just putting it in a bank to earn interest while waiting for the market to recover before jumping back in.”

Turnover on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange, Vietnam’s main bourse, fell to $568 million in October, its lowest monthly level since August 2020, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Cash held in Vietnamese investors’ securities accounts dropped to about 64.9 trillion dong ($2.5 billion) at the end of the third quarter, down 49% from a year earlier and the lowest level since the fourth quarter of 2024, according to data compiled by VnDirect Securities JSC.

Banks deposit rates at Vietnamese lenders increased for 11 consecutive months before the central bank ordered…

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