Vietnam Holding Limited said its net asset value rose by 3.3% in September helped by a strong performance from electricals group MWG, one of the fund’s largest holdings.
Other investments such as Digiworld, steel maker HPG and bank VPB also did well and Vietnam Holdings emerged as the top-performing fund for the first nine months of 2021, beating the VN Index by 24% and outperforming its peers, it said in a statement.
Vietnam's benchmark stock index, which has gained around 23% since the start of 2021 is this year's top-performing market in the Asia-Pacific region, the fund noted.
Digiworld, the country's leading ICT distributor, and HPG, Vietnam's top steelmaker, continued to benefit from rising demand throughout the pandemic, it said.
VPB will receive proceeds from selling its stake in the finance company FE Credit and Vietnam Holdings believes it can become the biggest private bank in Vietnam in terms of capital.
The fund’s manager Dynam Capital said that the performance was achieved despite Vietnam's economy being hit hard by strict lockdowns in September, with manufacturing falling significantly for the second month running and third-quarter GDP down 6.2% year-on-year.
Foreign investors were also selling throughout the month, but Dynam said a feature of lockdown in Vietnam has been the growth of the retail investment market.
Vietnam now has around 4mln trading accounts, it said, equivalent to around 3% of the population.
A survey carried out for Dynam recently indicated almost four-fifths of respondents had has seen strong gains over the past year while 59% expected the stock market in Vietnam to go up by more than 5% in the final months of 2021.