On their first day of trading in the first new year, many Asian stock exchanges provided the German stock market with a good template on Tuesday.

The Dax rose to more than 14,100 points at the start of trading, and after one hour of trading it even rose by 1.2 percent to 14,200 points.

Hanno Mussler

Editor in Business.

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The start of the year was already successful: On the first day of trading in 2023 on Monday, the index jumped over 14,000 points again and closed 1.1 percent higher at 14,069 points.

The stock exchanges in New York, London, Hong Kong and Tokyo remained closed on Monday.

The biggest winner in the Dax on Tuesday was Brenntag with significant price gains of 5 percent.

After public criticism from a shareholder, the chemicals trader decided not to take over its American competitor Univar Solutions.

Analysts at Bank Oddo-BHF commented positively on Brenntag on Tuesday.

The Satorius share, which had fallen significantly the day before, made up for part of its annual losses with a plus of 3 percent.

A positive analyst comment gave Fresenius a boost.

The shares of the healthcare group rose by around 0.6 percent to around 26.50 euros on Tuesday.

The experts at the investment bank Jefferies upgraded the title to "buy" and raised the price target to 35 from 24 euros.

The shares of the subsidiary Fresenius Medical Care (FMC), on the other hand, were lowered from "hold" to "below average" and reduced the price target to 22 from 29 euros.

The FMC share was the biggest Dax loser with price losses of 4 percent to 29.30 euros.

As on Monday, when the M-Dax gained 1.4 percent more than the Dax, the index of small and mid-caps also increased significantly by 1.6 percent on Tuesday.

However, a negative analyst comment weighed on the share price of the already badly battered biotechnology company Morphosys.

Experts from JP Morgan downgraded the stock included in the Tec-Dax and S-Dax to "underweight" and significantly reduced the price target to eleven from 18 euros.

The Morphosys course then lost around 3 percent on Tuesday to 13.17 euros.

In addition, Deutsche Bank made news.

In March 2022, immediately after the attack on Ukraine, it issued ambitious new targets for 2025, such as an after-tax return of more than 10 percent, revenues of around 30 billion euros and a cost/income ratio of less than 62.5 percent.

CFO James Moltke told the "Börsen-Zeitung" newspaper that he saw no reason to revise these goals.

The major strategic lines would have been confirmed even in spite of the war, inflation and higher interest rates.

"Even if we didn't foresee the year 2022 that way, it ultimately confirms our expectations - it just accelerated many of these developments again," said the CFO.

"This means that the alignment of our business areas continues to be right."

On Monday, the International Monetary Fund warned of a difficult economic year in 2023, in which a third of the world and half of the EU countries are likely to slide into recession.

On Tuesday, on the first day of stock trading, at least stock prices rose in large parts of Asia.

The index of the stock exchange in Shanghai increased by almost one percent to 3116 points.

The Hong Kong leading index Hang-Seng even closed 1.6 percent higher at 20,100 points and at times had the highest point level in almost five months.

Investors were not deterred by the rising number of coronavirus infections in China.

Even disappointing economic data did not stop them from buying on Tuesday.

In view of the massive wave of infections after the end of the zero corona policy in China, the purchasing managers' index "Caixin" showed a slight decline compared to November and is still below the 50 point threshold, which signals growth in the Chinese economy.

The Japanese stock market, on the other hand, remained closed on Tuesday due to another public holiday.

However, speculation that the Bank of Japan (BoJ) may be moving further away from its ultra-loose monetary policy buoyed the Yen.

In turn, the dollar fell 0.9 percent and was 129.50 yen on Tuesday, the cheapest since seven months.

The speculation is fueled by a report by the business daily "Nikkei", according to which the central bank intends to raise its inflation forecasts.

This could prepare interest rate hikes.

With the exception of the Bank of Japan, all of the world's major central banks ended a long phase of low interest rates in 2022 and fought inflation with interest rate hikes, while at the same time dampening economic output.

After the stock market year 2022, which was weak also because of the interest rate increases, investors in Germany are looking for investments that are as safe as possible for 2023.

At least 81 percent of a representative survey commissioned by the Association of German Banks (BdB) stated that they "rather not" or "not at all" could imagine taking a higher risk for a higher return.

A majority of 52 percent would like to invest a larger amount of money in real estate in the new year.

In fact, only 21 percent did so last year.

Also popular at 43 percent is an investment in gold, which only 12 percent of those surveyed actually made in 2022.

Fund shares (38 percent) and savings plans (37 percent), which were already the favorites in 2022, are still far ahead in investor favor.