Zurich (awp) – The Swiss Stock Exchange ended on a positive note on Friday, the penultimate session of the year which is ending. No macroeconomic data or company news animated the market, deserted by investors. At the day’s high, the SMI came within three points of 11,600. While there is still one session left to end the stock market year, the flagship SIX index shows a gain of 4.05% over one year.
In New York, Wall Street fell in the morning, with tech weighing down a market with little traffic during this holiday season, while investors are already looking ahead to the year to come.
Due to the holiday season, the market is experiencing “lower than average trading volume”, noted Patrick O’Hare of Briefing.com in a note, which can lead to high volatility in indices, rise and fall.
Market participants are still wondering whether Wall Street will benefit this year from a “Santa Claus rally”, the period of the last five sessions of the year which, in general, favors investors.
“In general, we observe a slight upward trend as we approach the end of the year (…) there is a certain seasonality that comes into play”, commented to AFP Adam Sarhan, of 50 Park Investments.
The SMI ended up 0.88% at 11,589.34 points, with a high of 11,597.29 and a low of 11,484.76. The SLI gained 0.89% to 1917.00 points and the SPI 0.91% to 15,463.80 points. The 30 star stocks finished in the green.
The banks UBS (+2.1%), Julius Bär (+1.5%) took the first two steps of the podium, the latter tied with the good Lindt. Novartis (+1.3%) took the bronze medal.
The Royal Bank of Canada raised the share price target of both banks and confirmed “outperform” each time. Analysts have updated their forecasts for 2026, estimating that political, economic and regulatory uncertainties would weigh on the banking sector in the short term. RBC, however, favors banks like UBS and Julius Bär, oriented towards the United States and with strict cost controls.
Roche (+1.0%) also outperformed, while Nestlé (+0.5%) remained more discreet.
The Vevey food giant announced on Monday that it had completed its most recent share buyback program. Since the start of this operation, in January 2022, Nestlé has bought back 187.4 million of its own shares on the stock market, for an amount of 20 billion Swiss francs. The average price stood at 106.74 Swiss francs per security, the company said (closing price Friday: Swiss francs).
At the bottom of the table, Holcim (+0.02%) finished almost stable. The insurers Swiss Life and Zurich each limited their gain to 0.1%.
In the broader market, Relief Therapeutics (+8.5%) has promised the signing of the merger contract with Renexxion by the first quarter of 2025. Discussions and planning are progressing positively, but there is no guarantee that an agreement final will be concluded or that the proposed transaction will be carried out as expected, however warned the company.
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