Continued high inflation kept the German stock market in check mid-week. After three days of gains in a row, the leading index Dax closed 0.24 percent lower at 15,891.93 points on Wednesday. The MDax for medium-sized titles fell by 0.52 percent to 27,520.30 points.
In early trading, the Dax had increased and approached the mark of 16,000 points to 40 points. But when the consumer prices from Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and Hesse became known after an hour of trading, the courses retreated. Across Germany, consumer prices rose by 6.1 percent in August – more than expected.
A drop in inflation should be “anything but a sure-fire success,” wrote economist Sebastian Becker from Deutsche Bank. Above all, persistently high wage pressure could further fuel price increases for services and thus generally slow down the normalization of inflation.
This is bad news for equities, as high inflation could fuel expectations of interest rates rising further. “The ECB is currently having a difficult job. The European economy is weak (…), while inflation rates remain at a high level,” wrote economist Thomas Gitzel from VP Bank. But the ECB’s mandate is clear: “Fighting inflation is at the heart of trade.”
On the company side, investors were once again busy with a number of annual reports, including those from Delivery Hero and Aroundtown. Delivery Hero shares fell by more than ten percent. The food supplier was also in the red in the second quarter. Aroundtown shares, on the other hand, rose by a good nine percent. Investors welcomed the fact that the real estate group became somewhat more optimistic about this year’s operating result.
The prospect of possible multi-billion dollar value adjustments by the Danish wind farm operator Orsted in the USA weighed on the entire wind and energy industry. Orsted shares fell a quarter in Copenhagen. In the Dax, RWE lost 4.7 percent and Siemens Energy 3.3 percent.
The Eurozone leading index EuroStoxx 50 lost 0.26 percent on Wednesday to 4315.31 points. On the Paris Stock Exchange, the Cac 40 ended slightly lower, while the FTSE 100 in London was modestly higher. The New York leading index Dow Jones Industrial was slightly up at the end of trading in Europe.
On the foreign exchange market, the euro rose due to high German inflation and also after weak growth data from the USA and was last traded at 1.0931 US dollars. The European Central Bank set the reference rate at 1.0886 US dollars.
In bond trading, the current yield rose from 2.58 percent on the previous day to 2.59 percent. The Rex pension index fell by 0.04 percent to 124.04 points. The Bund future recently lost 0.12 percent to 132.34 points.
