The Dax continued on its recovery course and closed at over 15,500 points. Easing worries about the banking sector and hopes of a reversal in the central banks’ interest rate policy encouraged investors to take risks again.
The inflation in Germany for the month of March, on the other hand, is likely to have provided only limited relief. Although it weakened, it remained at a high level. Ulrich Wortberg from the Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen (Helaba) pointed out that the price increases for food and services in particular are still considerable.
The German stock exchange barometer ended the day with a premium of 1.26 percent to 15,522.40 points. On the day before the end of the quarter, the Dax is less than 200 points short of its high for the year at the beginning of March. The recovery was mainly supported by real estate and technology stocks as well as banking and retail stocks.
The MDax rose by 2.14 percent to 27,458.79 points and Europe’s most important stock exchanges also increased. The leading euro zone index, the EuroStoxx 50, recorded an increase of 1.28 percent to 4285.42 points. In the USA, the Dow Jones Industrial increased moderately, the technology-heavy Nasdaq exchanges more clearly.
No relaxation despite falling inflation
Meanwhile, reactions from experts to the inflation data suggest that the market’s hopes of a soon-to-be relaxed stance by the European Central Bank (ECB) may be premature. According to economists, inflation in Germany may have peaked, but they are not expecting any significant relaxation this year. The ECB is likely to remain under pressure to “continue to fight inflation and continue to tighten interest rates,” wrote portfolio manager Thomas Altmann of QC Partners.
In the Dax, Vonovia, Commerzbank and Infineon were among the biggest winners, as were Zalando and Adidas. They all went up between three and six percent. The mood for the real estate sector, which was hit by rising interest rates and high energy and construction costs, had already turned 180 degrees across Europe by the middle of the week. Hopes that the tough ECB course will end soon are driving the recovery.
Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank, whose shares rose 1.6 percent, were helped by easing concerns about the banking industry. At Infineon, the increased annual targets had an impact. Numerous analysts raised their price targets for the semiconductor manufacturer’s paper on Wednesday and Thursday.
On the negative side, United Internet stood out in the MDax with a minus of almost four percent. One stockbroker rated the figures for the past year as mixed, as did the goals for the new year. According to Goldman, the market was also likely to be disappointed by the higher start-up costs for the emerging mobile network.
In the SDax, all eyes were on the solar technology manufacturer SMA, the image processing specialist Basler and the radiation and medical technology company Eckert & Ziegler. Significantly increased business targets catapulted SMA by almost 23 percent to its highest level since 2010. Basler and Eckert & Ziegler, on the other hand, were punished by investors because of their disappointing outlook. For them it was about 15 percent down.
The euro was trading at $1.0900 early in the evening. The ECB set the reference rate at 1.0886 (Wednesday: 1.0847) dollars. The dollar thus cost 0.9186 (0.9219) euros. The prices of German Bunds fell. The current yield rose from 2.30 percent on the previous day to 2.33 percent. The Rex pension index fell by 0.31 percent to 125.99 points. The Bund future fell by 0.37 percent to 135.06 points. (dpa)
