Shortly before the turn of the year and after an impressive rally, the German stock market is running out of steam. Even new records on the US stock exchanges on Thursday were no longer able to shake the already few active investors in this country out of their lethargy. The DAX fell by 0.24 percent to 16,701.55 points. At the near end of what is expected to be the strongest stock market year for the Dax since 2019, it recently settled below the record high of a good 17,000 points.
Shortly before the turn of the year and after an impressive rally, the German stock market is running out of steam. Even new records on the US stock exchanges on Thursday were no longer able to shake the already few active investors in this country out of their lethargy. The DAX fell by 0.24 percent to 16,701.55 points. At the near end of what is expected to be the strongest stock market year for the Dax since 2019, it recently settled below the record high of a good 17,000 points.
The MDax of medium-sized companies fell by 0.34 percent to 27,064.91 points on Thursday. So far in 2023, the Dax has increased by 20 percent and the MDax by almost 8 percent.
Trade is becoming increasingly thin. “Investors have largely closed their books and are hardly taking any new risks,” said market observer Andreas Lipkow. At the same time, the basic tone remains optimistic. “The trading year 2023 was not an easy one, but it was an above-average year for the stock market.”
With regard to companies, the news situation was also thin. While stocks that had performed particularly poorly this year were bought in the morning, there was no clear picture at the end. In the Dax, the shares of the online fashion retailer Zalando and those of Bayer closed almost unchanged, while Siemens Energy lost one percent. All three stocks performed particularly badly in 2023 – with losses of more than 30 percent.
In contrast, the shares of Heidelberg Materials and Rheinmetall performed particularly well in the 2023 leading index, with price gains of over 50 percent. Not much happened with either paper on Thursday. SAP, with an increase of 45 percent in third place among the DAX favorites this year, also barely moved.
Vitesco gained 4.4 percent at the top of the MDax on Thursday, but had recently lost a lot of value. The drive specialist is in the middle of a takeover by the Franconian automotive supplier Schaeffler. After the official takeover deadline expired, he secured almost 80 percent of Vitesco shares. In the next step, the remaining Vitesco shares are likely to be exchanged for Schaeffler shares and Vitesco would then be history on the stock exchange.
The European leading index EuroStoxx lost 0.29 percent to 4,514.38 points. France’s Cac 40 fell half a percent, while Britain’s FTSE 100 closed little changed. In New York, the leading index Dow Jones Industrial was moderately higher at the close of trading in Europe.
The euro suffered from profit-taking and was trading at $1.1077 in the evening. The European Central Bank had previously set the reference rate at 1.1114 (Wednesday: 1.1065) US dollars. The dollar therefore cost 0.8997 (0.9037) euros.
On the bond market, the current yield fell from 1.96 percent the day before to 1.95 percent. The Rex bond index rose by 0.27 percent to 129.06 points. The Bund future fell by 0.43 percent to 138.18 points in the evening.
Source: Stern
