The Swiss Stock Market Posted A Modest Increase

(RTTNews) - The Swiss stock market ended the first session of the new trading week with a modest increase. The market moved in a relatively narrow range throughout the session. Trading activity was light after the Christmas holiday and is likely to remain that way ahead of the New Year's Day holiday at the end of this week.

The SMI was mainly driven by the gains in pharmaceutical heavyweight Novartis. The defensive weighting of the Swiss market helped it to avoid the losses that most European markets endured on the session. Weakness in commodity prices weighed on energy and resource stocks across Europe.

The Swiss Market Index increased 0.39 percent Monday and finished at 8,739.36. The Swiss Leader Index climbed 0.27 percent and the Swiss Performance Index rose 0.40 percent.

Shares of private bank Julius Baer advanced 1.1 percent. Investor hopes for a resolution to the bank's tax dispute with the United States drove the stock higher. UBS gained 0.5 percent, but Credit Suisse dipped 0.2 percent.

Galenica climbed 1.2 percent and Lonza added 0.8 percent. Actelion rose 0.9 percent and Schindler gained 0.9 percent. Kuehne + Nagel advaned 1.6 percent, SGS increased 0.7 percent and Geberit added 0.5 percent.

Transocean dropped 3.4 percent on a weak day for energy stocks. The oil rig operator also reported the early termination of a lease on a platform by Shell. LafargeHolcim also declined 1.1 percent.

The index heavyweights all finished in positive territory. Novartis advanced 0.9 percent and Roche added 0.6 percent. Shares of Nestle also finished higher by 0.3 percent.

Aryzta has been one of the weakest performing stocks of the year and has suffered a loss of 33 percent in that time. The stock ended Monday's session with a gain of 0.8 percent.