Enlarge image
Dax near record high:
Profits at Porsche (Image: Annual General Meeting 2023) and good figures from the USA support the German leading index
Photo: Marijan Murat/dpa
Price gains on Wall Street, profits at Porsche and Mercedes as well as strong business figures from the tech companies Amazon and Meta brought the
Dax
close to its record high of a good 17,000 points on Friday: most recently, the leading German index was up 0.8 percent at 16,991 counters. The Eurozone leading index
EuroStoxx 50
was recently 0.77 percent higher. The
MDax
rose by 0.8 percent to 26,095 points.
Porsche leader in the Dax, Mercedes with high cash flow
On the German stock market, the focus was primarily on the automobile sector: Porsche shares rose by more than 5 percent, making them one of the biggest winners in the Dax. Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen were each between 2 and 3 percent higher. Mercedes-Benz pleased investors with higher cash inflows. The operating cash inflow from the industrial business (free cash flow) was 11.3 billion euros in 2023, well above expectations. Mercedes-Benz securities rose in price by around three percent. Investors now expect an attractive dividend from Mercedes.
Delivery Hero falls by double digits to record low
On the other hand, investors pressed the sell button on
Delivery Hero
. The food supplier's shares fell
by more than 13 percent in the
MDax
to a record low of 18.62 euros. Delivery Hero will have to look for another buyer for parts of its Southeast Asia business, according to a newspaper report. Talks with rival Grab broke down because of different price expectations, wrote the "Business Times" from Singapore.
Zalando
's shares
rose by 4.5 percent. The investment bank Morgan Stanley had raised the online fashion retailer's shares from "Equal-Weight" to "Overweight".
Eon under pressure by numbers
Eon
's shares
were also among the losers in the Dax, with the shares most recently down 1.12 percent. The energy supplier had beaten its own forecasts for 2023 and exceeded market expectations with its profit adjusted for special effects.
Tailwind from US stock markets
The latest US economic data has brightened the mood on Wall Street. The
Dow Jones index
of standard stocks closed around one percent higher at 38,519 points on Thursday. The technology-heavy
Nasdaq
100
advanced 1.3 percent to 15,361 points. The broad
S&P 500
improved by 1.2 percent to 4,906 positions.
At the end of the week, the balance sheets of Amazon and Facebook parent Meta in particular caused euphoria. Consumers' undimmed buying mood in the important Christmas season and robust cloud demand have given Amazon quarterly results above market expectations. Thanks to robust advertising revenue, the Internet group Meta surprisingly increased its sales by a quarter to $40.1 billion in the past quarter and would like to pay a dividend for the first time. Both stocks rose sharply in after-hours US trading.
Losses in oil prices on a weekly basis
Oil prices rose slightly in early trading on Friday. In the morning, a barrel (159 liters) of North Sea
Brent
for delivery in April cost $78.93. That was 23 cents more than the day before. The price for a barrel of American
West Texas Intermediate
(WTI) for March delivery rose 17 cents to $73.99.
However, significant losses become apparent over the course of the week. A key reason is the high supply outside the OPEC oil cartel. Storage and production data from the USA confirmed the picture this week. In addition, there is weakening demand due to the weak economy in many places.
The situation in the Middle East remains a significant risk factor. The Gaza war, attacks by Houthi militias on ships in the Red Sea and tensions between the USA and Iran are supporting oil prices. However, diplomatic efforts are underway in the background to release Israeli hostages, which, according to information from the Bloomberg news agency, are making progress. This has recently caused risk premiums on the crude oil market to fall somewhat.
With news agencies