In view of renewed interest rate concerns, the Dax started the week weakly on Monday. Around half an hour after the start of trading, the leading German index fell by 0.63 percent to 15,378.48 points. The MDax for medium-sized companies fell by 1.02 percent to 29,476.01 points, and the Eurozone leading index EuroStoxx lost 0.85 percent to 4221.66 points.
On Friday, the Dax had coped comparatively well with the very robust US job market report and, like the leading US index Dow Jones Industrial, closed a few hours later with only a moderate minus. The experts at the Swiss bank UBS spoke of a breather after the price jump on Thursday.
On the New York technology exchange Nasdaq, however, things had gone downhill significantly before the weekend. UBS competitor Credit Suisse said the extremely strong labor market data from the United States had underpinned the assessment that the US Federal Reserve would continue its rate hike course to a level of more than five percent. Technology stocks are considered to be particularly sensitive to rising interest rates.
Clear losses have also recently dominated the most important Asian stock markets. Concerns about escalating tensions between the US and China after the US military shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon over the weekend also had a negative impact.
The news situation on the German market initially looked clear. According to figures, the focus was on the Aurubis copper group, whose shares lost 5.8 percent at the end of the MDax. In view of the higher prices for their products, the Hamburg company is now more optimistic for the current financial year and sees operating profit before tax at the upper end of its target range. Although this had fallen in the past quarter, it was still well above the value of two years ago and the average analyst estimate. However, some investors may have hoped for a more optimistic outlook, commented one stockbroker. He saw profit taking after the stock’s very good run.
Index neighbor Carl Zeiss Meditec fell by 1.2 percent after the private bank Berenberg canceled its buy vote for the medical technology manufacturer’s stock and now only recommends it with “Hold”.
Technology stocks such as the semiconductor manufacturer Infineon and the online fashion retailer Zalando were also repelled with the weak specifications of the Nasdaq – with price reductions of 1.2 and 1.6 percent, they occupied lower places in the Dax. The special systems manufacturer for the chip industry Aixtron, Shop Apotheke and the software provider Suse were among the weakest values in the MDax and the SDax small-cap index.
On the other hand, the upward trend at Deutz continued: With an increase of 2.6 percent to 5.315 euros, the shares of the engine manufacturer expanded their profits in the still young year to over 30 percent and cost as much as last March.
According to experts, the fact that the activist investor Bluebell is gathering allies to enforce his demands for changes at Bayer, according to a report in the “Handelsblatt”, is nothing new. Accordingly, the price reaction in the shares of the pharmaceutical and agrochemical group was limited at plus 0.2 percent.
