Concerns about interest rates also put the Dax under pressure at the end of what had been a fairly friendly week so far. After the weak start to Friday, the leading German index was able to contain its losses somewhat – at noon it was 0.72 percent down at 15,422.22 points. On a weekly basis, there is still a gain of 0.8 percent. The MDax for medium-sized companies recently fell by 0.61 percent to 28,850.61 points. The Eurozone leading index EuroStoxx 50 fell by 0.73 percent to 4266.07 points.
In New York, share prices fell significantly on Thursday. The Asian stock exchanges followed on Friday. Interest rate worries are back on investors’ minds after US producer prices fell less than hoped for in January. At the same time, initial jobless claims fell surprisingly. So the US Federal Reserve did not send any signal from the labor market that it had to change its rate hike course to combat inflation.
In Germany, manufacturer price inflation weakened for the fourth time in a row in January, albeit from a high level. Import and export prices from the USA will follow in the afternoon.
On the company side, the focus was on the business figures of Allianz and Mercedes-Benz. The insurer reported record operating profits for the past year, clearly exceeding analysts’ expectations. Nevertheless, the shares lost two and a half percent as the Dax tail light. At the Stuttgart carmaker, the profit and sales growth reported for 2022 and the announcement of a billion-dollar share buyback program caused a price increase of more than three percent. The titles thus led the rather short list of winners in the leading index and cost as much as they did almost a year ago.
