The Helsinki Stock Exchange opened on a bullish note on Thursday morning, with its Nasdaq OMX index up by more than seven percent from the day before. That followed news of a temporary suspension of most of the US tariffs imposed last week.
After the morning spike, the increase faded to around four percent by midday, remaining in similar territory on Thursday afternoon.
Among the most widely traded shares, Nordea and Nokia were up by almost six percent, with big engineering and metal companies such as Konecranes and SSAB around the same level.
Fuel refiner Neste saw its stock price rocket by 12 percent in morning trading before settling to a rise of just over four percent.
Despite Thursday's gains, the Helsinki index still remained about 10 percent lower than a week earlier.
EU pushes pause button, too
On Thursday afternoon, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that the European Union would put on hold for 90 days its first countermeasures against the US tariffs.
"We want to give negotiations a chance. While finalising the adoption of the EU countermeasures that saw strong support from our member states, we will put them on hold for 90 days," she posted on X.
Brokerage apps and sites freeze up
Meanwhile the Nordnet stock brokerage service said that its website and app platform had been overloaded due to the volume of trading. The company said in a social media post that access to some of its service might be limited. It advised investors to contact brokers directly by phone. Around 11:30am Finnish time, Nordnet reported that its online services and app were working normally again.
Finland's largest financial conglomerate, the OP Group, meanwhile told the news agency STT that it was also experiencing slowness and disruption to its investments services on mobile and its website. As a result, some information did not open or only did so partially and slowly. However, trading in securities was proceeding normally, OP said.
