Swiss Market Snaps 5-day Winning Streak, Ends Marginally Down

(RTTNews) - The Switzerland stock market ended marginally down on Monday, settling lower after five successive days of gains.

Save for a brief while at the start, and then around mid morning, the market spent the day's session in negative territory. A recovery in the final hour pushed it up briefly into positive territory, but the market failed to find support and drifted lower again to eventually close modestly down.

Despite data showing a drop in inflation, the mood in the market remained cautious.

The benchmark SMI, which moved between 11,049.57 and 11,119.60, settled at 11,093.09, down 13.15 points or 0.12%.

UBS Group and Credit Suisse ended lower by 2.88% and 2.36%, respectively. UBS declined on reports the bank may cut up to 36,000 jobs worldwide.

Logitech drifted down 1.81%, while Alcon, Swiss Re, Partners Group and Swiss Life Holding shed 0.6 to 1%.

Swisscom, Novartis, Nestle and Givaudan gained 0.4 t0 0.9%.

Among the stocks in the Mid Price Index, Swatch Group, AMS, Bachem Holding and Kuehne & Nagel lost 2.4 to 3.7%.

VAT Group, Belimo Holding, Straumann Holding, SIG Combibloc and Tecan Group ended lower by 1 to 2%.

SGS, Barry callebaut and Helvetia gained 1.5%, 1.25% and 0.94%, respectively. Dufty ended higher by about 0.5%.

Data from the Federal Statistical Office showed Switzerland's consumer price inflation eased more-than-expected in March to the lowest level in three months amid a slowdown in prices for a broad number of categories.

The consumer price index, or CPI, climbed 2.9% year-over-year in March, slower than the 3.4% gain in February, the data showed. Economists had expected inflation to ease to 3.2%.

The overall inflation in March was largely driven by a 6.3% rise in prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages, slightly below the 6.5% increase in February. The annual price growth in utilities eased to 4.3% from 4.7%.

On a monthly basis, consumer prices edged up 0.2% versus a 0.7% rise in February. The expected increase was 0.4%.

Data showed that core consumer prices rose 2.2% yearly and by 0.2% monthly in March.