“Don’t buy stocks if you can’t spend at least two hours a day doing research.”

Dragon Capital CEO believes that investors who cannot dedicate sufficient time to researching the stock market should avoid buying individual stocks and instead consider open-ended funds.

At Dragon Capital’s investor conference broadcast on VnExpress on January 26, a reader raised the question of why, despite strong gains in the overall market index in 2025, many investors still found it difficult to make a profit. The question was whether the issue lay with the market itself or with investors’ approaches.

Responding to the question, Mr. Lê Anh Tuấn, CEO of Dragon Capital, pointed to a common psychological pattern among many investors. When their portfolios decline—sometimes suffering losses of 30–40%—they tend to “hold on,” even choosing to close their trading apps and ignore the losses. However, when portfolios turn profitable, even by just a few percentage points, many investors rush to take profits immediately. This mindset prevents them from benefiting from subsequent price rallies.

Mr. Tuấn cited Vingroup’s VIC stock as an example. Between July and September 2025, VIC’s share price rose from around VND 60,000 per share to above VND 70,000. Many investors chose to realize profits at that stage and, as a result, missed out on further gains when VIC continued to climb to higher price levels toward the end of the year.

“From a mathematical perspective, this kind of behavior makes it very difficult for many investors to outperform the market,” Mr. Tuấn said.

At the same time, the expert emphasized that difficulties are inherent in stock markets everywhere, not just in Vietnam. This reality requires investors to devote significant time to reading corporate financial statements, studying market conditions, and analyzing stocks in order to invest independently—demands that not everyone can meet.

For those who have busy jobs and some surplus savings but lack the time to focus seriously on stock market investing, Mr. Tuấn recommended open-ended funds. “If you cannot spend two hours a day researching and monitoring the stock market, let professional investors do it for you,” he stressed.

He also noted that investors are not limited to Dragon Capital’s funds. They can allocate capital through other professional fund management companies such as VinaCapital, SSI, or others.

In reality, 2025 has been widely viewed by analysts as a year that is “not easy to make money.” The reason lies in the deep market divergence, with gains concentrated in only a few stock groups such as the Vin ecosystem, banking stocks, or the Gelex group. Among them, VIC of Vingroup and VHM of Vinhomes accounted for nearly half of the market’s total gains—one of the most extreme cases of index concentration in the history of Vietnam’s stock market.

Statistics from Dragon Capital show that only about 17% of stocks outperformed the VN-Index, the lowest ratio in more than 25 years of market history. Excluding VIC and VHM, the overall index accumulated a gain of approximately 20.65%.

Percentage of stocks outperforming the market over the years. Graphic: Dragon Capital.

Mr. Võ Nguyễn Khoa Tuấn, Senior Director of Securities Operations at Dragon Capital, shared that discussions with peers at securities firms revealed that more than 90% of investor accounts either failed to make a profit or earned returns below 10%. The number of investors achieving profits of over 20%—matching or exceeding the benchmark index—was very small.

Meanwhile, the market currently has seven equity open-ended funds that have outperformed this level. These include BVFED (Bảo Việt Fund), DCDS (Dragon Capital), MAGEF (Mirae Asset Vietnam), BMFF (MB Capital), UVEEF (OUB), VCB-BCF (VCBF), and MBVF (MB Capital).

Experts often recommend dollar-cost averaging (DCA) as an investment strategy, particularly for non-professional investors or those without much time to track the market. This method helps reduce the risk of buying at peak prices, enforces discipline, and mitigates emotional decision-making.

In its early-year report, Fmarket—an open-ended fund distribution platform with more than 320,000 users—stated that instead of chasing short-term, localized rallies, value-oriented open-ended funds continue to accumulate shares of leading companies, prioritize risk management, and maintain disciplined portfolio structures. While this approach may cause fund performance to lag the VN-Index during certain periods, it helps preserve portfolio quality and accumulate high-quality assets to optimize returns when the market enters a broader growth cycle.

Performance data over 2-, 3-, and 5-year periods show that funds with consistent strategies and strong investment discipline can achieve sustainable growth despite short-term market volatility. Over a five-year horizon, the top-performing funds delivered average annual returns of approximately 15–22%, reflecting strong portfolio management capabilities, disciplined investment processes, and resilience across multiple market cycles.

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