After the strong previous week, investors started the new week a little more cautiously on Monday. The Dax was initially unable to increase after rising by more than nine percent in October. The leading index recently fell by 0.04 percent to 13,237.41 points.

After price gains on the New York and Tokyo stock exchanges, the Dax had meanwhile almost reached another high since mid-September. But it wasn't enough for more than 13,260 points. While the EuroStoxx was also just in the red, the MDax gained 0.43 percent to 23,754.03 points.

Contrary to expectations, the shares of Fresenius and FMC became a support for the Dax. The medical group and its dialysis subsidiary had announced renewed forecast reductions on Sunday due to the currently difficult economic environment. However, it quickly became clear that these had long been priced in.

The main burden for Fresenius is the subsidiary FMC, whose shares had already dropped by almost 9 percent before the weekend, due to the lowered forecasts by US competitor Davita. In the year to date, the FMC price has more than halved.

Significant price increase at Shop Apotheke

With fluctuations, the FMC shares recovered at the top of the Dax by 6.2 percent, followed by Fresenius with an increase of 4.2 percent. There was also a significant price increase for the SDax-Wert Shop Apotheke after the presentation of the final quarterly figures. A peak increase of 6.7 percent was put into perspective here, however, to just one percent recently. As already indicated, the online pharmacy had achieved a positive operating result.

After pessimistic comments from analysts, two stocks also attracted negative attention from the German small caps: a downgrade to "neutral" by the investment bank Oddo BHF pushed Patrizia Immobilien down four percent to a new low since 2014. It was clearer with a price slide of 6.5 percent for Dic Asset investors after Baader Bank downgraded them twice. Both experts referred to the currently weak real estate environment as the reason.