Frankfurt Stock Exchange
After attack on nuclear power plant – Dax increases losses
The Dax is the most important stock index in Germany. Photo: Fredrik von Erichsen/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
After an attack by Russian troops on a Ukrainian nuclear power plant, the price slide on the German stock market continued on Friday.
After an attack by Russian troops on a Ukrainian nuclear power plant, the price slide on the German stock market continued on Friday.
The Asian markets had already given way beforehand. The Dax increased its losses in the morning and was last down 2.38 percent at 13,372.81 points.
Even if the fire in the largest European nuclear power plant in the Ukraine has been extinguished and no increased radiation exposure can be measured, the incident on the market evokes fears of a nuclear catastrophe, wrote Jochen Stanzl from CMC Markets. “The longer this war lasts, the days and weeks with minus signs on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange are likely to continue.”
The MDax of medium-sized stocks fell by 2.25 percent on Friday morning to 29,649.16 points – the index has now reached its lowest level since the end of 2020. The downward pressure also continued on the European stage, with the Eurozone leading index EuroStoxx 50 recently losing 2.29 percent to 3656.06 points.
On the company side in the Dax, the list of winners was short. Merck KGaA followed on from the most recent gains with a premium of more than four percent. The day before, an optimistic outlook from the pharmaceutical and specialty chemicals group had given a boost to the course, which had been weakening since the beginning of the year. In addition, investors also grabbed some other Corona winners such as Sartorius and Hellofresh, but the growth was rather moderate at around 0.6 percent.
Shares in the utility RWE were also in demand, they recovered from recent high price losses with an increase of more than three percent. The papers of the competitor Eon lost rather moderately after a canceled buy recommendation by the Metzler bank. In contrast, the shares of Uniper, the largest German importer of Russian natural gas, continued their descent at the end of the MDax with a minus of more than 10 percent to the lowest level since August 2017.
For days, investors have been throwing Lufthansa papers out of their depots because of the rapid rise in oil prices, and the airline’s shares recently lost almost five and a half percent. The car manufacturers and suppliers also continued to give way, with losses of more than five percent for Porsche and Continental. In addition to rising prices, the industry is also burdened by concerns about possible delivery stops due to the war in Ukraine.
The forthcoming chair change in the Dax family caused price movements at Siemens Energy, which, surprisingly for some experts, switched from the Dax to the MDax on March 21. The papers climbed by almost one percent. In the second stock market league, however, the future Dax members Daimler Truck and Hannover Re were under pressure – the truck manufacturer’s papers fell by more than four percent, while those of the reinsurer lost almost three percent.
Index changes are particularly important for funds that replicate indices in real terms. There must then be shifted and reweighted accordingly, which can have an impact on share prices.