UBS Group reported a third-quarter net profit that beat analysts’ expectations, lifted by its investment bank and wealth-management arm, and said it is offloading Credit Suisse noncore assets and achieving savings faster than expected. The Swiss banking group said Wednesday that net profit for the third quarter was $1.425 billion compared with a loss of $715 million in the same quarter last year. Analysts had forecast a net profit of $740 million, according to consensus estimates compiled by the bank. Revenue was $12.33 billion, up 5.5% on year, reflecting growth at the group’s investment bank and its key global wealth management business. UBS said the units benefited from strong transactional activity. Analysts expected revenue of $11.54 billion, according to the same consensus. The global wealth management unit brought in $25 billion of net new assets, after attracting inflows of $27 billion in each of the first two quarters of the year. UBS said underlying pretax profit rose to $2.39 billion from $914 million, beating consensus expectations of $1.70 billion. The results also reflect UBS’s work to integrate Credit Suisse after last year’s rescue takeover at the behest of Swiss authorities.

Save for a few minutes at the start, the Swiss market remained in negative territory on Tuesday as investors reacted to a slew of earnings updates, and looked ahead to some key economic data from the U.S. The benchmark SMI ended down 137.40 points or 1.12% at 12,100.57, slightly off the day's low of 12,098.69. Straumann Holding tumbled 7.4%. SIG Group drifted down 4.4% and Novartis lost about 4.1% despite reporting higher earnings. Novartis reported a net income of $3.19 billion for the third-quarter, up from $1.51 billion in the year-ago quarter. Lindt & Spruengli closed down 3.12% and Sonova lost nearly 2.5%. Sandoz Group declined 2.05%, while Adecco, Nestle and Sika lost 1.6 to 1.7%. Lonza Group, Partners Group, ABB, Geberit, Zurich Insurance and Julius Baer also closed weak. Baloise Holdings lost nearly 4%. The company announced that it has agreed to sell its digital insurer Friday's portfolios in Germany and France to Allianz for an undisclosed amount. UBS Group climbed nearly 1.5%. Schindler Ps and Logitech International both gained about 1.35%. VAT Group closed up 0.73%.

European stocks closed lower on Tuesday with investors digesting a slew of earnings reports from European and U.S. companies, and looking ahead to some crucial economic data due later in the week. Markets also keep a close eye on Wednesday's U.K. budget announcement and the upcoming Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election. Analysts expect the Autumn Budget to introduce key fiscal reforms, including tax changes and wage adjustments that could significantly impact the industry landscape. In European economic news, a survey showed that Germany's consumer confidence is set to recover more strongly in November to hit a more than two-and-a-half-year high. The forward-looking consumer sentiment index rose to -18.3 in November from a revised value of -21.0 in October as both income expectations and the willingness to buy showed a back-to-back improvement, according to a survey conducted by the market research group GfK and the Nuremberg Institute for Market Decisions (NIM). Elsewhere, U.K. shop prices declined the most in more than three years in October amid falling non-food prices and easing food inflation, the British Retail Consortium, or BRC, said. The shop price index declined 0.8% on a yearly basis in October, larger than the 0.6% decrease in the previous month. This was the weakest deflation since August 2021. The pan European Stoxx 600 closed down 0.57%. The U.K.'s FTSE 100 dropped 0.8%, Germany's DAX ended lower by 0.27% and France's CAC 40 fell 0.61%. In the UK market, Airtel Africa tumbled more than 7%. BP closed nearly 5% down, as it reported lower profit and cash flow from a year ago, weighed down by a drop in refining profits and weaker oil trading.

The major U.S. stock indexes all moved higher during trading on Monday but returned to the mixed performance seen to close out the previous week on Tuesday. While the tech-heavy Nasdaq showed a notable advance to reach a new record closing high, the Dow closed lower for the sixth time in the past seven sessions. The Nasdaq climbed 145.56 points or 0.8 percent to 18,712.75, extending its winning streak to four days. The S&P 500 also rose 9.40 points or 0.2 percent to 5,832.92, but the Dow fell 154.52 points or 0.4 percent to 42,233.05. The climb by the Nasdaq came ahead of the release of earnings news from big-name tech companies, with Google parent Alphabet and Advanced Micro Devices among the companies reporting their quarterly results after the close of today's trading. Semiconductor stocks showed a particularly strong move to the upside, driving the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index up by 2.3 percent. Shares of JetBlue plummeted after the airline reported better than expected third quarter results but forecast a decrease in fourth quarter revenue. Shares of Snap Inc. jumped after hours on Tuesday after the social-media platform reported third-quarter results that beat expectations and said its board authorized a stock buyback of up to $500 million. The company, known for Snapchat, reported a third-quarter net loss of $153.2 million, or 9 cents a share, narrower than the $368.3 million, or 23 cents a share, net loss in the same quarter last year. Revenue rose 15% year over year to $1.37 billion.

With the exception of the Japanese stock market, the stock exchanges in South East Asia and Australia are showing losses on Wednesday. Bucking the regional trend, the Nikkei-225 in Tokyo rose by 1.1 per cent to 39,332 points. On Thursday, the Japanese central bank will announce its decisions on future monetary policy.

In the U.S. bond market, treasuries recovered from early weakness to end the day roughly flat. As a result, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price, edged down by less than a basis point to 4.274 percent after hitting a three-month intraday high of 4.339 percent.

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