The nervousness of investors is growing.

The Dax fell back below the 16,000 mark on Tuesday in the face of renewed pandemic and interest rate concerns.

At times, the leading German index lost 1.2 percent to 15,911 points.

This means that it is moving away from its record high of 16,290 points.

The M-Dax small cap index lost 1.5 percent to 35,126 points.

Portfolio manager Thomas Altmann from QC Partners justified the interest concerns with the nomination of the incumbent US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell for a second term.

As a result, three rate hikes are expected in the United States in the coming year.

"Rising interest rates are now once again a danger for the stock markets," said the expert.

In addition, voices are growing louder about the continued high inflation.

The previous evening there had been such statements from the American Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, followed on Tuesday by the German director at the European Central Bank (ECB), Isabel Schnabel.

The corona pandemic had already caused growing uncertainty among stock marketers in the past few days.

Stock placements drop individual prices

In terms of individual stocks, the shares of Thyssenkrupp with minus 6.4 percent and those of Synlab with minus 10.6 percent were affected by placements by major shareholders. In the case of Thyssenkrupp, major shareholder Cevian halved its stake in the group to almost 7.9 percent. According to the Bloomberg news agency, several major shareholders sold 10 million shares in the laboratory specialist Synlab at a price of 22.15 euros. This is a discount of around ten percent on the previous day's closing price of EUR 24.60.

Delivery Hero issued around 600,000 new shares for an employee share program, which, however, only corresponds to 0.24 percent of the share capital.

The shares fell around 2 percent.

The picture at Aareal Bank was completely different.

With a price jump of 4 percent, they were the best value in the S-Dax.

The financial investors Advent and Centerbridge want to pay 29 euros per share in cash for the real estate financier.

The share even exceeded this price slightly at EUR 29.22 most recently.