Dusseldorf On the penultimate trading day of the year, the Dax moved away from the 16,000 point mark. On Wednesday afternoon, the leading German index was down 0.5 percent at 15,885 points. The daily low is 15,879 meters.
The setback towards the 15,900 mark is due, among other things, to the low trading volume: by the early afternoon, just twelve million Dax stocks were traded. The daily annual average is around 70 million. The big investors have already closed their books on the stock exchanges for the current year, which leads to thin trading volumes.
In the past two days, the volume was low with 29 and 34 million shares, so relatively few buyers were enough to move the Dax towards 16,000 points. Accordingly, a few profit-taking are now sufficient to move the Frankfurt stock market barometer in the opposite direction.
The current breather on the Dax is not unusual after the recent rise. Since falling to almost 15,000 points on December 20, the index has risen by more than 900 points or six percent within six trading days.
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“The fears after the appearance of the Omikron variant at the end of November have so far not come true,” says analyst Jochen Stanzl from the online broker CMC Markets. The stock exchanges would therefore ignore both the rapidly increasing number of infections in some countries and the danger of the fifth wave, which may be hidden by the holidays. “Investors are already mentally looking through the pandemic and are hoping for the economic strength to continue in the coming year.”
The development of the volatility index VDax fits in with this. This signals which rate fluctuations the futures professionals expect in the next 30 days. The higher the index, the higher the “implied volatility”, as it is called in technical jargon. The current value is a moderate 18. At the beginning of the month it was 28.
The jump over the mark of 16,000 points should therefore be postponed for the time being – possibly in January, when traditionally new money flows to the stock exchanges. In the past ten years, however, the Dax has not always benefited from this effect.
Data from the financial service Refinitiv show that the Dax has achieved six positive performance and four negative performance since 2012 in January. When it went up, it was relatively clear, on average by 4.9 percent. The average losses are slightly lower at 3.9 percent.
However, the January performance is only of limited informative value for the stock market year. Both in the current and last year, the Dax fell in that month, but still closed the stock market year with a profit.
Look at individual values
Deutsche Bank: The financial supervisory authority Bafin has sentenced Deutsche Bank to a fine of 8.66 million euros. Germany’s largest financial institution has temporarily not effectively implemented the preventive measures specified in a European regulation, which are intended to prevent manipulation of the Euribor reference interest rate, said the Bonn authority. Deutsche Bank shares are down 0.8 percent.
Infineon: In the wake of weaker US technology stocks, semiconductor stocks were also among the biggest losers in this country. Infineon titles are among the losers in the Dax, down 1.2 percent.
Eventim: The head of the ticket marketer and concert promoter is optimistic for the second quarter. “We believe that we can carry out our many festivals and also large open-air tours like Ed Sheeran’s,” said Klaus-Peter Schulenberg of the “FAZ”. Eventim papers lose 0.5 percent.
LPKF: In the SDax of the lower capitalized German companies, the recently strongly recovered LPKF shares are among the losers with a minus of almost five percent. The annual balance sheet of the laser specialist is also sobering with a loss in value of a third – the SDax has increased by almost eleven and a half percent in the same period.
Hornbach Holding: At Hornbach Holding, moderate initial profits were enough for a record high of 130.60 euros. Most recently, the papers were just below that. Since the beginning of the year there has been a substantial increase in value of almost two thirds.
Lira gives in again
Persistent inflation concerns weigh on the Turkish lira. In return, the dollar has risen by around six percent to 12.495 lira, and the euro by more than five percent to up to 14.102 lira. The Turkish currency had gained around 50 percent in the previous week after state guarantees for savings deposits and central bank interventions. Over the year, however, it has depreciated by around 40 percent against the dollar.
The yield on Turkish government bonds continues to rise, reaching a value of 24.835 percent. At the beginning of the year this was still 12.510 percent. So it is becoming more and more expensive for the Turkish state to go into debt.
Nevertheless, the situation with credit default insurance has eased somewhat. With these, professional investors can hedge against the risk of default on Turkish government bonds. The annual premium for credit default swaps (CDS) is traditionally given in basis points and in relation to bonds with a five-year term. It is 554 basis points for CDS for Turkish bonds on Wednesday: professional investors pay 5.54 percent of the nominal value of their bond per year to hedge against default.
Shortly before Christmas, this value was 6.24 percent, and has fallen since then. However, it is still exceptionally high. For comparison: For the Federal Republic of Germany this value is 0.08 percent annually.
Steinhoff shares cause a sensation
The share of the South African-German trading group Steinhoff is currently causing a sensation. On Tuesday, the papers rose 16 percent after Steinhoff announced that several creditors had agreed to a settlement. The company had worked towards this for years. The group had already reported on an impending settlement on December 15, but only on condition that enough creditors would agree to the settlement.
It is noticeable that the trading volume already increased before the reports. “Der Aktionär” has been reporting on speculation that has been circulating for a few weeks that investors may have bought Steinhoff shares that had detailed information on what happened with the creditors. Since the beginning of the month, the share is more than 130 percent in the black. On Wednesday the course fluctuates around the previous day’s level.
Steinhoff had to admit a billion-dollar balance sheet hole at the end of 2017. The Steinhoff share, which is also listed in Frankfurt, then collapsed to a fraction of its value and is now only a penny stock, so the price is in the cent range. Since then, Steinhoff has tried to put the business back on a solid footing with a comprehensive restructuring of the balance sheet.
US corporations dominate world stock exchanges more than ever
The world stock exchanges are dominated by US technology groups more than ever. Eight of the ten most valuable companies in the world will be from the United States by the end of 2021. The smartphone and software giant Apple scratches with a market value of 2.96 trillion dollars (as of December 27) as the first company ever to scratch the three trillion mark.
Apple shares rose 31 percent this year, according to calculations by the management consultancy EY and the Reuters news agency. Microsoft moved up to second place with a plus of 52 percent and a valuation of 2.57 trillion dollars, Google owner Alphabet moved up from fifth to third place with a price increase of almost two thirds and a market capitalization of 1.96 trillion dollars . Alphabet alone is worth more than the 40 companies in the German leading index Dax combined, which come to just under 1.9 trillion dollars.
The most valuable DAX value is not based in Germany: The Linde gases group is 77th worldwide with 175 billion dollars after doubling its market value since the merger of the American Praxair with Munich-based Linde AG. The software company SAP remains the most expensive German company with $ 166 billion in 2021, but falls back to 80th place (2020: 72nd). Siemens (137 billion) makes it again just under the “Top 100” after a year break.
Notice: The passage on the Steinhoff share was subsequently specified at 13:52.
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