It wasn't quite enough for the Dax 500.

Germany simply doesn't have enough listed companies for that.

But at least the Dax 40 will be available from September 20th.

After 33 years of index history with only 30 values.

The past few years have revealed the index's weaknesses.

Chemicals, old energy, banks, cars: the heavyweights all had problems and made the index look old in the truest sense of the word.

It is cyclical and therefore highly volatile.

And it lags behind a number of benchmark indices in terms of performance.

Last but not least, the competition in-house: the M-Dax.

Calculated back to the beginning of 1988, the Dax has risen to this day (including dividends) from 1,000 to a good 15,000 points.

The M-Dax, however, from 1000 to a good 34,000 points.

Daniel Mohr

Editor in the economy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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Deutsche Börse is therefore making a virtue out of necessity and will in future be adding the ten most valuable M-Dax stocks to the leading index, the Dax. Without further ado, it is robbed of half of its market capitalization and reduced from 60 to 50 values. The action - triggered by the bankruptcy of the Dax stock Wirecard - gives the Dax a new face. After the Berlin delivery service Delivery Hero became the first young, tech-based business model in the Dax last year, the Berlin online fashion retailer Zalando and the Berlin cooker box mail order company HelloFresh will most likely follow in September. In addition, Symrise, an important supplier to the food industry, could strengthen the Dax - an industry that has not yet existed there. Sartorius and Siemens Healthineers would complement the health sector,which has gained significantly in importance in the corona pandemic.

The more colorful and younger image of the industry is an asset to the index. It is not a fundamental change. The ten new values ​​will make up approximately 13 percent of the index. 87 percent stay with the old ones. Anyone who owns an exchange-traded Dax fund (ETF) will not notice the change. The Dax will not make a leap up on September 20 with the new values, because companies with a market value of more than 200 billion euros will be added. The weight in the index is just distributed differently. An existing Dax value like Daimler, for example, will lose around 0.8 percentage points in weight in favor of the newcomers.

The ETF will accordingly sell shares in Daimler and the other 29 previous DAX stocks and have to buy the new shares. But this effect should not be assessed too massive. With a good 15 billion euros invested in Dax ETFs, they only own a good 1.3 percent of Dax shares. For most of the values ​​there is only one change in the alcohol range among shareholders. ETFs on the Euro Stoxx 50 are much larger. Much more money is also invested in the funds on the MSCI World and the S & P500 than in the Dax products. But the index is not insignificant: Many other equity funds are based on the Dax, the public and analysts take a closer look at the leading index.

The aircraft and weapons manufacturer Airbus, formerly EADS, has had a Dax format for a long time. However, since the shares are to a large extent also traded in Paris, it has so far not been enough for Germany's first stock market league. Now the rise is certain, because in the future it does not matter that some of the shares are in Paris. With a market value of the freely tradable shares (and only those are relevant for the Dax) of more than 60 billion euros, Airbus is in 6th place in the current stock market ranking. The weight in the Dax will accordingly be just under 5 percent. The index funds therefore have to buy up a lot of shares. However, this is only a short-term argument in favor of the stock.