- Peter Dixon, a global equities economist at Commerzbank AG
Swiss stocks erased previous day's gains on Wednesday after a report showed U.S. pending home sales fell by more than expected and Spanish borrowing costs rose.
The Swiss blue-chip index SMI, a measure of the largest and most actively traded companies, shrunk 0.20%, or 11.91 points, to 5,902.82. The broader Swiss Performance Index lost 0.39%, or 21.41 points, to 5,504.52.
"What we are looking at now is a crisis of confidence and when you get a crisis of confidence, of course, equities suffer," Peter Dixon, a global equities economist at Commerzbank AG in London, said.
"Spain is the big thing which everybody is concerned about at the moment and Spain is a problem of a much bigger order of magnitude than anything we've seen so far."
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