ZURICH. The Swiss Market Index opened on Friday already below Thursday’s close and kept falling. By 09:15 it was down 1.51 per cent at 14,740.96. All 20 blue chips were lower. A day after the index touched a record at 15,092.56, Zurich was trading as if that print had been a visit, not a new home.
Thursday’s official close was 14,968, down 0.37 per cent. The record had not survived the cash session. Friday’s open was about 0.9 per cent lower, at 14,831, and the selling widened from there. The mid-cap SMIM fell 1.49 per cent to 3,220.85. The broad SPI fell 1.48 per cent to 22,772.66. This was not a story about one stock.
Wall Street broke first, and Asia followed
The lead came from New York. The Nasdaq 100 had its sharpest daily fall since the March 2020 crash. The Nasdaq Composite closed 5.52 per cent lower at 24,315, about 11 per cent under its October high, which is the usual line for calling a correction. The Dow Jones fell 3.44 per cent to 51,523. The Philadelphia semiconductor index dropped more than 12 per cent. In Asia the Nikkei fell 5.96 per cent to 57,435.
Dealers quoted by the Swiss financial wires described a rush for the exit: investors leaving at the same time because each of them is asking when the boom in artificial intelligence ends. A second line, from the same morning notes, tied the selling to Tuesday’s US midterms. With Congress in Democratic hands, projects for data centres that had been treated as safe may be looked at again, and the industry could meet resistance at the point that matters most to the share prices, the billions going into AI infrastructure. On Wednesday morning the SMI had treated that political fact as almost irrelevant. Thursday afternoon repriced the optimism. Friday morning repriced the technology.
Swiss Re led the blue chips down. Medacta led the warnings
Inside the SMI the damage ran from a fall of about 0.3 per cent at Logitech to about 2.6 per cent at Swiss Re. Kuehne+Nagel was down about 3.1 per cent after Goldman Sachs cut its rating. Sonova was down about 2.6 per cent after RBC did the same. The defensive label did not spare the insurers or the logistics names. It only meant Zurich fell less than Seoul or Tokyo.
The harder company news was outside the top 20. Medacta cut its outlook for 2026 and the shares fell about 10 per cent, after a pre-market indication of minus 7.9 per cent. The orthopaedics group now expects sales growth of about 9 per cent and an adjusted operating margin roughly in line with last year. It kept its targets for 2024 to 2027. Aryzta’s finance chief, Martin Huber, is leaving for a job outside the company. The timing is still open. The shares were indicated 4.1 per cent lower before the open and were down about 1.5 per cent later in the morning. Thursday’s record session had already split the market. Construction and luxury were bid. ABB was not, after China blocked the Chinese piece of its robotics sale. Friday did not split the SMI. It sold it.
Oil near 100 dollars, a firmer dollar, and a jobs report still to come
Brent was up 1.26 per cent at 99.53 dollars a barrel. West Texas Intermediate was up 0.93 per cent at 91.36. Gold was down 1.08 per cent at 4,045 dollars an ounce. Bitcoin was quoted near 75,686 dollars, about 5.9 per cent lower over 24 hours. The franc did not play the usual haven. The dollar was a little firmer, with USD/CHF at 0.8183 against 0.8165 at 21:00 on Thursday. EUR/CHF was at 0.9142, from 0.9165.
Two calendar items were still ahead of the cash close. The National Bank is due to publish October’s foreign-exchange reserves, and the United States publishes its monthly employment report this afternoon. Dealers were already warning that the jobs numbers can move the tape twice, once on the headline and again on what they imply for the Federal Reserve. The Swiss policy rate is still zero, and the next National Bank assessment is still in December. Live prices for the SMI, the franc, gold and oil are on the markets page. Friday’s lesson, at 09:15, was simpler than the forecast. A record set on Thursday is not a floor on Friday if New York has spent the night selling the trade that had been holding everyone else up.