ZURICH (Dow Jones) — The Swiss stock market ended the last trading day of the week with gains. The much-anticipated April US jobs report came in stronger than expected. 253,000 new jobs were created, while analysts had only expected 180,000 jobs.
At second glance, the Commerzbank economists found the US job market report to be weaker than it appeared at first glance. “Broadly speaking, the report confirms the picture of a slowly weakening labor market,” it said. The initially strong increase in jobs is put into perspective by the revisions for February and March. Also, those who had a job tended to work shorter hours than before. According to the analysts, the employment of temporary workers, which is considered a leading indicator, is also showing a clear downward trend, since these jobs are often the first to be lost in a downturn.
The SMI improved by 0.9 percent to 11,554 points. There were 18 price winners and 2 losers in the 20 SMI values. 29.89 (previously: 39.73) million shares were traded.
With the strong recovery in bank prices in the USA, the shares of CS Group and UBS also gained significantly. With premiums of 5.1 and 3.9 percent, they were at the top of the SMI winners.
The Clariant share, on the other hand, fell by 0.2 percent. First-quarter results were slightly worse than expected, according to Baader analysts. The chemical company posted an organic sales decline of 5 percent in the first quarter, which was mainly due to currency effects that offset a price increase. The Group’s EBITDA collapsed by around 24 percent, with the company pointing to one-off effects including an impairment. The sales and margin forecast for the full year was confirmed in view of a probable economic recovery towards the end of the year.
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 05, 2023 11:40 ET (15:40 GMT)
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