July was a good month for German investors.

The Dax share index started at around 12,800 points and ended at 13,500 points.

And in the first days of August it went on like this.

The external circumstances are not exactly comfortable.

The central banks in Washington, Frankfurt and London are pulling the emergency brake with varying degrees of strength.

Loan programs will continue, but interest rates are more or less noticeably adjusted to a more permanent high-inflation scenario.

Philip Krohn

Editor in business, responsible for "People and Business".

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In terms of world politics, the situation has not improved at all.

Fighting in the regions of eastern Ukraine continues.

The visit of the US speaker of parliament, Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan has brought this focus of conflict with China back into focus.

The leadership in Beijing responded with missile tests that came closer to the island nation's territory than they had in many years.

But the mood on the stock exchange is mixed: On the one hand, experts expect that purchasing power could be so weakened by the end of the year that the economy will also experience a real dip.

On the other hand, investors are currently taking figures from companies with them that are still usable.

This was evident this week when the online retailer Zalando disclosed its quarterly results and the share price rose by double digits in the meantime.

The price increase for the US transport company Uber was even clearer.

Purchasing managers' indices are meaningful at the moment

In such undecided phases on the stock exchange, it is valuable to look at meaningful indicators.

These include purchasing managers' indices because they show what demand behavior the managers responsible for procuring components expect in the coming months.

Even if they do not indicate anything dramatic, it is clear that planning in many sectors is now somewhat more cautious.

At 52.8 points, the purchasing managers' index for US manufacturing was still 2.8 points above the value that indicates growth.

But it has now reached its lowest value in more than two years.

Does that indicate a dip or the economic downturn that many have been expecting?

Can't say yet.

Somewhat more advanced is the interpretation of the values ​​for the manufacturing industry in Germany, where the threshold of 50 has now been undershot for the first time in two years.

But as I said, the signals are not clear at the moment. One example is German exports, which have reached a record volume.

However, it remains a factor of uncertainty among the macroeconomists of banks and institutes.

Growth is not the top priority for Zalando for the time being

Zalando promises its shareholders to pay even more attention to its profitability.

Growth should no longer be so much in the foreground.

With the outlook, the company pleased investors who have suffered from the weak performance so far this year.

This week, the stock was one of the weekly winners.

Significantly, along with another big loser so far this year: Hello Fresh.

These papers also rose in value this week by double digits.

At the end of the week there were fewer company reports.

And since these are currently generating the most positive price momentum, investor interest waned again.

They evaluated the performance of Deutsche Post, whose share price increased by 5 percent, very differently.

On the other hand, investors in Europe's largest insurer Allianz resented the lower surplus.

The stock temporarily lost 3 percent of its value on Friday.

Insurers have been a beneficiary of the recovery from the Corona crisis.

But times are volatile.