Many investors still haven’t got over the disappointing stock market year of 2018. The subdued sentiment quickly overlooks the fact that markets are currently staging the best start to the year in almost three decades. International stock markets have started to rebound in 2019, with the S&P 500 gaining 8% since the beginning of the year – the best start to market trading since 1991. The DAX has also gained 7%. The German benchmark index would have started even better if it had not been for the adverse effects from the accusations surrounding Wirecard and the disappointing outlook at Henkel and thyssenkrupp. All in all, investors have boldly gained exposure to last year’s losers in the course of this year. The important car stocks in the DAX, on the other hand, have staged a „market-neutral“ development and have only performed as well as the index. We view the current upswing…

We are for the first time publishing forecasts for the DAX and Euro Stoxx 50 for mid-2019 which read 14,200 points and 3,900 points respectively. This assumption is based on our macroeconomic and political baseline scenario “Italy does not trigger an EMU sovereign debt crisis 2.0”. At the corporate level, rising profits, solid dividend growth and high returns on capital will further drive the bullish market underway since 2009. At the macro-level the synchronous performance of the global economy and the mix of low inflation and interest rates also helps. The greatest risks remain of a political nature – however, to date we do not expect appreciable skid marks in the economy and the stock markets. Investors should therefore remain invested and/or exploit the current price weakness to buy. By mid-year 2019 we expect the DAX to rise to 14,200 points (Euro Stoxx 50: 3,900 points), meaning by roughly 11…

The MDAX is the shooting star of the DAX index family. The index of 70 medium-weight stocks has been racing from one high to the next over several trading days. The smallest member of the family, the SDAX, has also been trading at record levels, while the leading index itself, the DAX, is still trailing six percentage points behind its all-time high. Based on our outlook for 2017, we expect the DAX to temporarily clear the 12,000 point mark in the course of the year so that the prospects of the all-time high (12,374 points from April 2015) being reached in the near future look altogether good. In a long-term comparison, the MDAX has outstripped the other DAX indices by far. Since 30.12.1987, the index has gained 11.3% p.a. while the DAX has „only“ reached 8.8% p.a. Thanks to the compound interest effect, the excess return of 2.5% p.a. has…

Following the election of Donald Trump, it was as if an imaginary switch had been flipped on the stock markets that put U.S. indices in a marked ‘everything is going to be alright’ mode. The European stock markets have meanwhile also been swept up by this wave. We expect positive sentiment to continue in the equity market until spring 2017. Investors, de facto, will have no other choice in 2017 than to return to the equity markets in order to enhance the target return on mixed portfolios. Bonds and property markets are overheated and commodity investments do not offer a genuine alternative. The starting point for stock markets in 2017 is promising: the economic outlook is stable, recovery in the emerging markets is accelerating and low interest rates provide companies with attractive sources of financing. The strongly export-oriented German stocks are benefiting from the weak euro. Increased calls for a…