This study is the first to investigate the asymmetric effects of oil price volatility on stock returns for the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HOSE). We utilized weekly series of VN30-Index, WTI crude oil prices, geopolitical risks (GPR) index, and gold prices spanning from 6 February 2012 to 31 December 2023 as data sources. Using a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) bounds testing approach, we found that, in the shortterm, oil price volatility has negative asymmetric effects on market returns. Specifically, in the shortterm, a 1 percent increase in oil price volatility immediately leads to a 2.6868 percent decrease in the market returns, while a similar magnitude decrease in oil price volatility is associated with a 6.3180 percent increase in the market returns. In addition, the results obtained from the NARDL model indicated that, in the longterm, the negative and positive changes of oil price volatility have significantly negative effects on the market returns. Finally, the findings derived from the error correction model (ECM) show that a 98.21 percent deviation from the equilibrium level in the previous week is converged and corrected back to the long-term equilibrium in the current week.