market report
The stock markets seem to have digested last week’s setback. Thanks to positive signals from Wall Street last night, the DAX is likely to continue its recent upward movement at the start of trading.
According to pre-market signals, the leading German index will start XETRA trading at around 17,955 points. That would be an increase of around half a percent. Yesterday the DAX gained 0.7 percent to 17,861 points.
The price dip from last week has been at least partially ironed out. Last week, Iran’s attacks on Israel led to many investors fleeing the stock market. There was also uncertainty about the central banks’ future interest rate policy. Weak quarterly figures from streaming provider Netflix on Friday further spooked investors.
For the DAX in the morning, positive US markets from yesterday evening are once again providing an upward impulse. The Dow Jones index of standard stocks closed 0.7 percent higher at 38,239 points. The broader S&P 500 gained 0.9 percent to 5,010 positions. The index on the Nasdaq tech exchange rose by 1.1 percent to 15,451 points. “Traders are looking for small bargains,” said Robert Pavlik, portfolio manager at Dakota Wealth.
This week, the corporate reporting season for the last quarter is getting into full swing and is likely to continue to influence the stock indices. Over the course of the week, the US technology giants Meta, IBM, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Intel provide insight into their books. This afternoon, companies such as General Motors, Philip Morris and PepsiCo are already presenting their quarterly financial statements.
In the Far East, the stock markets presented a mixed picture in the morning. In Tokyo, the Nikkei index was 0.3 percent higher at 37,538 points shortly before the close of trading. Technology stocks from the region experienced an upswing: shares in the world’s largest contract manufacturer of computer chips, TSMC, rose by 1.5 percent. In contrast, Chinese stocks fell, with the Shanghai stock exchange losing 0.4 percent to 3,032 points. The index of major companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen fell 0.5 percent to 3,513 points.
The euro has barely changed on the foreign exchange market and is therefore in the narrow trading range of the past few days. In the morning the common currency costs 1.0654 dollars, almost the same as yesterday.
Oil prices rose slightly in early trading, with a barrel of North Sea Brent trading at $86.66, around half a percent higher than the day before. In view of investors’ increasing willingness to take risks, safer investments such as gold are on the sales list. After the latest record run, the price of gold slipped yesterday by 2.6 percent to $2,329 per troy ounce. That was the biggest daily loss in more than a year. In the morning, a troy ounce costs around one percent less at $2,304.
In Germany, too, corporations present their balance sheets for the first quarter. Yesterday evening, Europe’s largest software manufacturer SAP published its balance sheet. The company started the new year with a surprisingly low operating result due to high costs for share-based employee compensation. Earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT), adjusted for special effects, grew by 16 percent year-on-year to 1.53 billion euros in the first quarter.
Overall, sales increased by eight percent to just over eight billion euros. This was driven by the cloud products for use over the network for a subscription fee: Here SAP increased by almost a quarter to 3.93 billion euros. Due to high costs for the group restructuring, the group slipped into the red with a loss of 824 million euros.
The head of the pharmaceutical and chemical group Bayer, Bill Anderson, is asking investors to be patient with his plans for the pharmaceutical and agricultural group. “It will not be a quick solution within a year, and there will be difficult moments,” said Anderson, according to the speech to the virtual general meeting on Friday published in the evening. Anderson reiterated that he is not initially planning to split up the company, as some investors are calling for. The Bayer boss also confirmed the company’s financial goals.
Also in the evening, the financial service provider Hypoport reported good figures for the beginning of the year. Sales in the first quarter increased by 15 percent compared to the previous year to around 107 million euros, as the SDAX-listed company announced. Earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) rose from 0.8 million euros to 4.3 million euros. In the first quarter, Hypoport’s Europace platform benefited from a general upturn in demand for real estate loans and higher market shares. The financing volume processed grew by 11.6 percent year-on-year to 18.4 billion euros.
The electric car company Tesla is presenting its business figures for the past quarter this evening. It is already known that, to Wall Street’s surprise, deliveries of electric cars fell by more than eight percent. Accordingly, the analysts now expect lower sales and a lower operating profit. Over the weekend, Tesla once again reduced the prices for some models in the USA and China. It is unclear whether this will shelve plans for a cheaper model priced at around $25,000.