The Swiss market suffered a significant decline for the second consecutive session as continuous selling pressure became evident on Thursday. This was influenced by data that showcased the shrinking manufacturing sector in Switzerland for the 13th month in a row.
Further contributing to the downward trend were comments from Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell, who suggested a rate cut was unlikely in March. Thus, the leading SMI index, which had recently broken a five-day winning streak, underwent a loss of 119.47 points or 1.05%, settling at 11,213.91. The index even plummeted to a low of 11,194.31 during the day's session.
Roche Holding, in particular, saw a 5.5% decline after the prediction of a slow recovery for sales and earnings this year. Roche logged a profit of 11.50 billion francs with a sales record of 58.72 billion francs for the year ending December 31, 2023. However, this fell short of analysts' expectations of a net income of 14.86 billion francs.
Many other companies also experienced losses, with UBS Group decreasing by approximately 3.3%, and Holcim, Zurich Insurance Group, Swisscom, and Swiss Re decreasing by a range of 1.3% to 1.6%. Furthermore, both Swiss Life Holding and Kuehne & Nagel suffered reductions of around 1.2%, with Alcon, Logitech International, and Richemont only slightly better off.
Conversely, ABB experienced a lift of about 1.7%, Novartis moved forward by 1.3%, while Lonza Group and Sonova gained 0.68% and 0.5%, respectively.
Within the Mid Price Index, Sandoz toppled by nearly 4%, SIG Combibloc fell by 1.21%, while Avolta, ams OSRAM AG, Swatch Group, and Flughafen Zurich saw close to a 1% decline. However, Straumann Holding made considerable progress with a 3.81% rally. Lindt & Sprüngli, Julius Baer, Georg Fischer, BKW, and VAT Group secured gains between 0.6 to 1%.
Finally, in economic news, the Swiss procure.ch and Credit Suisse Manufacturing PMI remained stagnant at 43.1 in January 2024 from 43 the previous month. This result missed economic predictions forecasting a reading of 44.5.
