The Dax index started the trading day on Wednesday with gains, with the leading index calculated at around 21,509 points by 9:30 am, a 0.4% increase from the previous day’s close. Siemens Energy and Infineon shares led the pack, while Qiagen’s stock ended at the bottom of the list.
The discussions at the stock exchange were still centered around the developments surrounding the Chinese AI startup “Deep Seek”, which achieved surprisingly good results at a relatively low cost. “Artificial Intelligence was long considered something that the Dax was missing, but now it’s showing its advantages” commented Jochen Stanzl, chief market analyst at CMC Markets. “In the midst of the commotion around Nvidia and others, the index in Frankfurt could reach a new record high at the start of trading and 22,100 points are still possible in the medium term, the upward trend remains intact.”
While the rally continued in Frankfurt, Stanzl warned that in New York, AI would “at least for a moment, turn from blessing to curse.” “Sneaky buyers of Nvidia are in danger of getting caught in the falling knife” he said. “The reactions of established AI companies so far have been a mix of astonishment, perseverance and conspiracy theories.”
Apple, Stanzl explained, was the secret winner of the “Deep Seek” controversy. “The iPhone manufacturer is not like, for example, Microsoft, which went all in early and invested 16 billion dollars in OpenAI. Apple has OpenAI’s good reputation paid for, essentially got the implementation for free and can now observe the developments quietly” he said. “The shareholders are thanking the stock for the clever tactics of its management with a rally.”
The European common currency was slightly weaker in the morning: one euro cost around 1.0426 US dollars and one dollar was worth around 0.9591 euros.
The oil price also decreased slightly: a barrel of the North Sea Brent type cost around 77.41 US dollars by 9 am German time, a decrease of 8 cents or 0.1% from the previous day’s close.