Swiss Market Pares Early Gains, Ends Marginally Down

(RTTNews) - After staying slightly up in positive territory till about a couple of hours past noon on Thursday, the Switzerland stock market slipped, and ended weak despite recovering most of the lost ground in the closing minutes.

The benchmark SMI ended with a loss of 14.84 points or 0.14% at 10,790.32. The index, which advanced to 10,867.83 at the start, dropped to a low of 10,667.43 before staging a fairly good recovery.

Swiss Re surged 2.3% and UBS Group gained nearly 2%. Sika, Credit Suisse and Partners Group ended higher by 1.46%, 1.31% and 1.13%, respectively.

Lonza Group and Swiss Life Holding both ended nearly 1% up.

Richemont drifted down 2.8%. Logitech shed 1.25%, while Nestle and Swisscom both ended nearly 1% down.

Among the stocks in the Swiss Mid Price Index, Helvetia declined 3.65%. Clariant ended 1.25% down, while AMS, Swiss Prime Site, Schindler Ps, Flughafen Zurich and Lindt & Spruengli lost 0.8 to 1.1%.

Tecan Group climbed 2.3%. Bachem Holding, Julius Baer, Temenos Group, Cembra Money Bank and VAT Group gained 1.2 to 1.6%.

Switzerland's unemployment rate held steady for the second straight month in August, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, or SECO, said on Thursday.

The unadjusted unemployment rate came in at 2% in August, the same rate as in the previous two months. That was in line with economists' forecast.

In the corresponding month last year, the jobless rate was 2.7%.

The youth unemployment rate, which is applied to the 15-24 age group, rose to 2.2% in August from 1.8% in July.

Data also showed that the seasonally adjusted jobless rate came in at 2.1% versus 2.2% in the previous month.