The German DAX opened Thursday morning in the red. By 9:30 a.m. the benchmark index was calculated at roughly 25,200 points, a full 0.3 % below the previous day’s close. Among the leaders were Symrise, Fresenius, and FMC, while the laggards were Airbus, RWE, and BASF.
Thomas Altmann of QC Partners noted that “the optimism on Wall Street has come somewhat back. The S&P 500 finished in the green for the third consecutive day, and in the wake of this renewed U.S. optimism the DAX has reclaimed the psychologically important 25,000‑point threshold”. He added that it remains to be seen whether there are enough buyers above 25,000 to pull the index toward a new record high.
The euro strengthened early in the session, trading at 1.1801 U.S. dollars per euro, which means one U.S. dollar was worth 0.8474 euro.
Oil prices rose sharply: at around 9:00 a.m. German time, a barrel of North Sea Brent crude fetched about $71.08-up 73 cents, or 1.0 %, from the prior closing level.
