On March 19, the largest bank in Switzerland – UBS reached an agreement to buy Credit Suisse for 3.25 billion USD. The deal ends Credit Suisse’s 167-year existence as an independent organization. WSJ called the deal the first “super merger” of systemically important global banks after the 2008 financial crisis.
Home sales and real estate investment activities in China still decreased in the first two months of the year, but the pace slowed significantly compared to last year. Data recently released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) shows that the country’s real estate sector has shown signs of improvement after nearly 2 years of being in crisis. Residential floor area sold decreased by 3.6% in the first two months of the year compared to last year. This level is much lower than last year’s decline rate of 24%.
On the international market, gold prices closed the weekend trading session at 1,989.3 USD/ounce, a sharp increase of 6% compared to the end of last week, due to concerns about the continuing banking crisis after the Central Bank Europe (ECB) raised interest rates despite ongoing financial stability risks. Domestic gold prices also fluctuate in the same direction. Overall for the week, SJC gold price increased sharply in the range of 350,000 – 1,100,000 VND/tael. Currently, the buying price of SJC gold bars is at 66.85 million VND/tael and the selling price of SJC gold bars is at 67.77 million VND/tael. Other types of gold jewelry also increased sharply during the weekend session, the price of 24K gold increased by 800,000 VND/tael.
The stock market had a struggling trading week, VN-Index decreased slightly by 7.86 points (-0.75%) points, down to 1,045.14 points. Open-ended stock funds still maintain performance compared to the market, have positive growth. The risk level of the portfolio is always maintained lower than the general market. In there, BVFED stock fund certificates are having the best performance over the past week with an increase of 7.38%.
In the past week, bond funds have maintained stable profits with positive rates of return. Among them, DFVN-FIX bond fund certificates are having the best performance with an increase of 3.41%.