By about 12:30 p.m. Monday, the DAX had recovered most of its Friday‑level losses after a rather muted start to the trading day. The index stood at roughly 22,290 points, almost touching Friday’s closing level.
The top performers in the composite were RWE, MTU and EON, while the lowest‑ranking names included Siemens Energy, Zalando and the Commerzbank.
According to Andreas Lipkow, chief market analyst at CMC Markets, some investors were selectively buying shares from the energy sector and from defensive areas such as health and telecommunications. “The market environment remains tough” Lipkow said. “Although the market has already priced in a large part of the negative signals, further bad news keeps pouring in. It is difficult to judge how quickly rising energy prices will translate into inflation, and how high oil can go”. He added that the damaged infrastructure in the Middle East is likely to prevent a fast disinflationary trend.
Lipkow stressed that “the risk of an inflation shock cannot be ruled out”. He drew parallels to the period after the outbreak of the Ukraine war, noting that the market currently benefits from relatively low trading volume, which eases selling pressure. However, it is still too early to give the market a green light. If US ground forces are deployed in an Iran conflict, a new chapter might begin.
On the currency front, the euro showed a slight weakening in the afternoon: one euro bought 1.1494 U.S. dollars, while one U.S. dollar was worth 0.8700 euro.
Meanwhile, oil prices climbed. At around 12:00 p.m. German time, a barrel of North Sea Brent topped out at $115.10-an increase of about 2.3 percent over the previous day’s close.
