The good news first: In the past week, the leading German index Dax has made up ground: around 3 percent.

The German stock exchange barometer has not been able to do this for a few weeks.

What happened?

Suddenly, euphoria broke out on the markets on both sides of the Atlantic.

It started on the Friday of the previous week and swept into October to reach its peak on Tuesday: with an impressive increase of 3.8 percent.

The only problem is that the stock market traders have not priced in good news, but at most hopeful values.

Namely that the central banks around the world, above all the Fed in the USA, are restraining themselves in tightening monetary policy.

Investors are pinning their hopes on the US jobs report released on Friday.

Archibald Preuschat

Editor in Business

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The hopes remained unfulfilled.

Non-farm payrolls growth in September was above expectations.

The stock exchanges reacted promptly, including in Frankfurt.

The Dax slipped deeper into the red.

The dollar appreciated.

Investors are left with the question: What to do with the money that is left over after paying the heating bill?

Again, the good news first: interest rates are back.

The direct bank ING even pulled a product out of the mothball box with which the German subsidiary of the major Dutch bank became big and successful in the past decade: the fixed-term deposit.

ING wants to pay a full percent for new customers – but only for four months.

Existing customers are compensated with 0.3 percent, but only from December.

Banks collect

Experts assume that interest rates on fixed deposits will rise to up to 2 percent by the end of the year, but what does that mean in times of double-digit inflation?

Only "securities savings", with which the ING wanted to prevent money being deposited into the account during the negative interest phase, is currently even less fun.

And it will probably stay that way.

Because there is great uncertainty among investors as to whether the central banks will be able to use their monetary policy to push inflation back towards the 2 percent target mark.