Stock market raises standard trading lot to 100 to cope with overload

The Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange is set to raise the minimum number of shares that can be transacted in order from 50 to 100.

It had planned to effect the change on January 18, but after testing and interaction with securities companies it has decided to advance it by two weeks to January 4 “if everything goes smoothly,” a bourse spokesperson said.

Currently investors wanting to trade odd lots of 1-49 shares have to transact with securities companies instead of on the exchange.

HoSE executives said securities companies are keen to make the switch and willing to speed it up.

A standard lot of 100 is the norm in many countries in the neighborhood such as SET (Thailand), BM (Malaysia), and SGX (Singapore) consistent with international practices and reasonable given the current market conditions, HoSE said.

The larger lot size is expected to reduce the load on the system at a time when market liquidity is at historic highs. Between December 17-28, the exchange had to halt trading completely for short periods of time as volumes approached VND14 trillion ($606.14 million).

Le Hai Tra, head of its board of directors, said at a press conference last week that the exchange was receiving 3-12 times higher volume of orders than before.

Although the system has backup capacity, it cannot cope with this sudden surge immediately, he explained.

Before Covid-19 caused other asset classes such as property to lose their charm and redirected cash into securities, HoSE saw average daily trading of VND3-5 trillion.

But in the last two months, it has surged to VND12-14 trillion as the benchmark VN-Index kept rising and approached the 1,000-point mark, a threshold it struggled to cross in the last two years.

The VN-Index on Wednesday shed 0.18 percent to close at 1,097.54 points. Trading was worth VND13.5 trillion.