The Swiss Stock Exchange began the last session before Christmas on Monday with little enthusiasm, most of the participants having already deserted the floor in anticipation of the end-of-year celebrations. A few rare company announcements and macroeconomic data should nevertheless fuel the session.
Wall Street ended higher on Friday evening, inspired by an indicator which eased the market's fears of seeing inflation resist or even accelerate in the United States.
“This rebound follows fresher than expected inflation data. This helped to alleviate market concerns sparked by the Federal Reserve's forecast of an interest rate cut in 2025,” summarized John Plassard of Mirabaud Banque in a commentary.
The positive trend was also supported by the narrow avoidance on Saturday of a budgetary paralysis in the United States (“shutdown”) which would have sent hundreds of thousands of civil servants home for the holidays without pay.
The signing of this last minute agreement in the United States and a better than expected PCE inflation index in November should support the markets, Raiffeisen analysts estimated in a note, nevertheless evoking “calm trading before Christmas”.
On the macroeconomic agenda this Monday are the consumer confidence index for December in the United States and the UBS-CFA index for December in Switzerland.
In the United Kingdom, growth remained zero in the third quarter, announced the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which revised downwards its first estimate of 0.1%.
Around 9:18 a.m. on the Swiss Stock Exchange, the flagship SMI index fell by 0.05% to 11,379.62 points, after dropping 0.26% on Friday at the close. The SLI lost 0.08% to 1882.57 points and the SPI fell 0.07% to 15,188.53 points.
The majority of star stocks were in the red, led by Sika (-1.1%). Goldman Sachs analysts lowered the chemical giant's price target for the construction sector, but confirmed the buy recommendation.
Straumann (-1.0%) and Sandoz Group (-0.8%) also gave up their gains, without specific information.
At the other end of the table, insurers Swiss Re (+0.8%) and Zurich Insurance (+0.6%), as well as UBS Group (+0.5%) were sought after.
Swisscom (+0.2%) did not pay much attention to the green light from the Italian authorities for the acquisition of Vodafone Italia. The blue giant plans to finalize the transaction by the first quarter of 2025.
On the general SPI index, SoftwareOne (-5.0%) detracted. Research Partners lowered the software distributor's price target and recommendation.
Basilea (-0.1%) received $7.3 million from the Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X) fund to develop the antibiotic BAL2420 and conduct first-in-human clinical studies. -2026.
