The German stock market opened on Wednesday with slight losses. By 9:30 a.m. local time, the DAX was calculated at roughly 24,765 points, which was 0.1 % below the previous day’s closing level. The top performers were BASF, Mercedes‑Benz, and Deutsche Telekom, while at the bottom of the list were Heidelberg Materials, Scout24, and Rheinmetall.
Thomas Altmann of QC Partners commented that the U.S. shooting down of an Iranian drone had already shaken Wall Street last night, keeping political risk high. “Investors should be prepared for spontaneous, heightened volatility” he said. “The incident revives precious metals as a safe‑haven, and oil prices are reacting with a jump. After all, Iran holds the world’s third‑largest oil reserves”.
Altmann added that the trading volume in the DAX yesterday was the highest so far this year. He believes the spike was largely due to profit‑taking when the index briefly surpassed the 25,000‑point threshold. “There remain too few long‑term investors willing to keep the DAX comfortably above 25,000” he noted. Instead, traders usually buy on dips and sell on recoveries, making it a classic trader‑dominated market.
On the currency front, the euro was slightly stronger in the morning: €1 fetched $1.1831, while $1 was worth €0.8452.
Oil prices rose concurrently. Around 9:00 a.m. German time, a barrel of North Sea Brent fetched $67.61, which is 28 cents-or 0.4 %-higher than the close of the previous trading day.