Swiss Market Ends Higher For 5th Straight Session

(RTTNews) - Despite spending almost the entire session in positive territory, the Switzerland stock market ended just marginally up on Monday as buying interest was subdued due to a lack of cues.

The market opened flat with a slightly negative bias, and after rebounding into positive territory soon thereafter, stayed above the flat line till the end.

The benchmark SMI, which hit a new high at 10,867.16, ended the session with a small gain of 4.47 points, or 0.04%, at 10,846.29, extending gains to a fifth straight session.

On Friday, the SMI ended with a gain of 148.30 points, or 1.39%, at 10,841.82.

Swiss Re gained nearly 1.5%. Zurich Insurance Group and Swiss Life Holding moved up 1.2% and 1%, respectively.

LafargeHolcim, Lonza Group, Swisscom and UBS Group ended higher by 0.5 to 0.6%.

Richemont declined 3.3% and Swatch Group ended lower by about 3.1%. Geberit and Alcon ended down 1.1% and 0.9%, respectively.

In the midcap section, Ems Chemie Holding climbed 4.35%. Temenos Group gained about 2.25%, while Clariant, Baloise Holding and Partners Group gained 1 to 1.35%.

Among the other major markets in Europe, the U.K. and France ended lower, with their benchmark indices the FTSE 100 and CAC 40 declining 0.3% and 0.36%, respectively. Germany's DAX advanced 0.17.The Pan European Stoxx 600 ended down 0.14%.