Swiss Market Ends Modestly Higher On Late Buying

(RTTNews) - Despite spending much of the day's session in the red, the Switzerland stock market ended modestly higher on Friday thanks to some selective buying at a few counters in the final hour.

The mood remained cautious amid lingering worries about growth and aggressive monetary tightening by global central banks.

The benchmark SMI ended with a gain of 29.19 points or 0.27% at 10,770.40, after scaling a low of 10,631.55 and a high of 10,815.39 intraday.

Lonza Group surged 2%. Nestle, Zurich Insurance Group, Alcon and Givaudan gained 0.9 to 1.2%, while Roche Holding advanced about 0.6%.

Richemont drifted down by about 1.4%. ABB shed 0.82%, while UBS Group, Novartis and Logitech lost 0.6 to 0.7%.

In the Mid Price Index, Zur Rose rallied 5.7%. Flughafen Zurich climbed nearly 4% and Tecan Group gained 3.1%, while Sonova, Bachem Holding, Cembra Money Bank and Dufry gained 1.2 to 1.8%.

VAT Group ended more than 4% down. Clariant and AMS lost 3% and 2.9%, respectively. Julius Baer ended nearly 1% down.

On the economic front, the procure.ch and Credit Suisse Manufacturing PMI for Switzerland fell to 59.1 in June of 2022 from 60.0 in the previous month, still above market expectations of 57.9.