The Dax is currently looking pretty red.

If the ETF owners look at their portfolios, the position is deep in the red.

On Tuesday the big Dax reform will be celebrated for the first time.

40 instead of 30 values ​​should make the index more attractive through more diversity.

Since then, the index has dropped by 16 percent.

All of the ten newcomers are in the red.

Only Qiagen has visibly held up better than the index.

Daniel Mohr

Editor in Business.

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The great reform has fizzled out in terms of performance.

The newcomers weighed on the index rather than boosted it.

It is precisely those values ​​that were supposed to give the Dax a young, more dynamic face that made it look quite old.

The Berlin online fashion retailer Zalando destroyed 77 percent of the invested investor money in its first Dax year, the Berlin meal box mail order company Hello Fresh 72 percent.

None of the “old” Dax values ​​were anywhere near as bad.

But Dax investors don't have to worry too much.

The two newcomers have a weight of just around 1 percent in the index.

So your price crash only affected the Dax in the per thousand range.

Of course, international investors are watching closely what Deutsche Börse is doing with its Dax.

Global investment is thinking more and more in index categories.

Exchange-traded index funds, ETFs for short, are gaining in importance.

They can be used to invest in markets cheaply and easily.

And in the major developed markets, they deliver returns similar to those of expensive fund manager-managed products.

And for the fund managers, too, the indices are the measure of all things.

Only those who perform better than the index are worth their money.

Around 22 billion euros are currently invested in the Dax via ETFs.

In view of the 1.4 trillion euros market value of the Dax values, only a fraction.

Active funds with an investment volume of around 30 billion euros are compared with the Dax, i.e. they pay Deutsche Börse fees for the "benchmark" Dax.

That's little compared to the US stock market in particular.

Where are Aldi, Lidl and Rewe?

It's up to all of us why that is.

Germany does not have a strong equity culture.

The share does not have a political lobby in this country, nor do Germans like to invest in the capital market.

And the entrepreneurs prefer to keep their companies privately owned and finance themselves with bank loans than to try their luck in a stock market listing.

These backgrounds are important when assessing whether the Dax is a good index for investing.

Because the image of an economy on the stock exchange depends to a large extent on the role that the stock exchange plays in the country.

In Germany, large food retailers such as Lidl, Aldi, Edeka and Rewe are not listed, while in other countries this sector plays an important role on the stock exchange with companies such as Wal-Mart, which also provide a good balance to more economically sensitive stocks with their comparatively stable business models cares.

But other large German companies such as the automotive supplier Bosch or the media group Bertelsmann are not on the price list either.

Not to mention infrastructure groups like Deutsche Bahn.

Companies prefer to withdraw from the stock market.

In recent years, the number of listed companies in Germany has fallen from 750 to 450.

The selection of eligible companies for selection indices such as the Dax is therefore clear.

In America, ten times as many companies are listed.