Hanoi (VNS/VNA)- The Vietnamese stock market continued to reach another historic record, withthe largest number of new accounts opened in December after 21 years ofoperation. 

A recent report from VietnamSecurities Depository (VSD) showed that in December, domestic investors opened226,580 new securities accounts, an increase of more than 6,000 compared to theprevious month. 

By the end of 2021,domestic investors opened a total of more than 4.27 million accounts, of whichretail investors accounted for nearly 4.26 million. 

Meanwhile, foreigninvestors opened 39,510 accounts.

Thus, in 2021, investorsopened 1.5 million new accounts, mainly of domestic individual investors. Theamount is equal to the combined amount over the last four years. 

VSD said that this is an importantfactor helping the stock market increase strongly last year, reaching a recordat the 1,500-point level.

Tran Van Dung, Chairman ofthe State Securities Commission of Vietnam (SSC), said that the 1.5 million newaccounts opened in 2021 have a much higher quality than before in terms oftransaction size and do not use as much margin as before. Individual investorsare the group leading the stock market to a record high in 2021, he added.

The country's stock marketrecorded extraordinary performance with all indices of the three exchangesskyrocketing compared to the end of 2020. The exchanges are the Ho Chi MinhStock Exchange (HoSE), the Hanoi Stock Exchange (HNX) and UpCOM. 

Accordingly, the marketbenchmark VN-Index surged by 394.41 points, equivalent to 35.7 percent, to1,488.88 points.

The HNX-Index climbed 133.3percent to 473.99 points while the UpCOM-Index rose by 51.3 percent to 112.68points.

Liquidity in 2021 was 2.6times higher than that of 2020, reaching 26.6 trillion VND per session (1.17billion USD). In September, the trading value continuously crossed over 1billion USD, with some sessions reaching 2 billion USD. 

The stock marketcapitalisation reached 7.77 quadrillion VND last year, up 46.8 percentyear-on-year, reaching 123 percent of the unadjusted 2020’s GDP and 92.6 percentof the adjusted GDP.

The strong cash flows intothe stock market last year was thanks to low bank interest rates in recentyears and less attraction to other investment channels. 

Besides, securities becamean attractive and widely known investment channel, and the opening of newaccounts is also easier due to e-KYC technology.

With cash flow still asstrong as at the beginning of the new year, the stock market isforecast to set new highs. Many large enterprises made breakthroughs inthe difficult year of 2021 and have good prospects going into 2022.

Opening the first tradingday of the New Year, the VN-Index once again broke over the1,500-point level, boosted by bullish sentiment. It continued to hit a newrecord high at 1,528.57 points in the third session of the year, before fallingbelow 1,500.

Analysts from VNDirect saidthat the growth of listed businesses’ profits will continue to support theVN-Index, therefore, the Vietnamese stock market can grow higher this year.

The securities firmexpects the market’s benchmark may hit new peaks at around 1,700 - 1,760points in 2022, on the basis that price-per-earning (P/E) valuation is at16-16.5 times and the profit growth of all enterprises is 21 percent./.