Concerns about the banking sector in times of uncertain monetary policy returned with force to the market on Friday. The share prices of Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank collapsed. After recovering by more than 800 points in the past few days, the leading German index, the Dax, slipped back below 15,000 points.
After a daily low of almost 14,800 points, the Dax lost 1.81 percent to 14,935.21 points in the afternoon. His weekly plus shrank to just over one percent. It was an overall volatile week, falling to its low since the first week of January at 14,458 points, before staging a rapid recovery to near 15,300 points.
The MDax with the medium-sized stock market values fell on Friday by 2.63 percent to 26,547.08 points. The US stock markets also got off to a weak start, although the losses there were much less dramatic.
Investors are primarily concerned with the future monetary policy of the US Federal Reserve. The speculation ranges from more interest rate hikes to an interest rate pause to imminent rate cuts.
Uncertainty remained evident in the real estate sector, which was again weak, but even more so in the banking sector due to the recent turmoil surrounding Credit Suisse and some US regional banks. Deutsche Bank stocks fell by more than ten percent to a new low since October. Commerzbank’s shares did not fare much better at a discount of 6.4 percent. At times, the losses on both stocks were even more pronounced.
The Volkswagen shares were also negative in the Dax, with a discount of 3.4 percent. Analyst Daniel Schwarz from the investment house Stifel dropped his buy recommendation after almost halving the price target. Since the group does not benefit from valuable holdings such as Porsche, Lamborghini and Bentley, its previous valuation approach based on the sum of the parts of the group is no longer appropriate.
The euro fell again significantly on Friday. Most recently, the common currency cost 1.0753 US dollars. The day before, the European Central Bank (ECB) had set the reference rate significantly higher at $1.0879.
German Bund prices rose on Friday. While the Rex pension index rose by 1.31 percent to 127.57 points, the current yield fell from 2.23 percent the previous day to 2.02 percent. The Bund future gained 0.87 percent to 138.63 points.