After a strong start to the year, the Dax weakened on Thursday. A cautious attempt at recovery was thwarted by strong US jobs data early in the afternoon. The leading index then fell by 0.35 percent to 14,440.00 points. The MDax for medium-sized companies rose by 0.45 percent to 26,566.06 points. The Eurozone leading index EuroStoxx 50 fell by 0.37 percent.
The US private sector created an unexpectedly large number of jobs in December. Appropriately, fewer applications for unemployment benefits were made than expected. The strong labor market drives inflation as it leads to rising wages. This makes it more difficult for the Fed to fight inflation, which it wants to get under control by raising interest rates. Rising interest rates tend to be negative for the stock market.
Among the individual stocks, Zalando shares rose by 2.5 percent at the top of the Dax. Papers from Hugo Boss rose by one percent in the MDax. The market pointed to strong sales figures from the UK's Next Group at Christmas time. Boss should also benefit from the CEO's share purchases of just over one million euros.
The papers from Morphosys and Synlab from the small-cap index SDax received particular attention. Synlab's shares fell to a record low and recently fell by 5.9 percent. As Europe's largest laboratory operator announced on Wednesday evening, proceedings against two subsidiaries were initiated by the Portuguese competition authority. Accordingly, the two are said to have violated competition law together with competitors and an industry association. Deutsche Bank analyst Jan Koch expects that the possible consequences, “if at all”, will most likely be limited to a fine in the low double-digit million range.
Morphosys shares responded to sales forecasts for the important blood cancer drug Monjuvi with losses of 6 percent. The biotech company expects modest growth at best for Monjuvi this year. According to the US bank JPMorgan, the mean value of the range now specified by Morphosys for net product sales is well below the average analyst estimate.
The euro traded at $1.0576 in the afternoon. The European Central Bank set the reference rate at $1.0599 on Wednesday.
On the bond market, the current yield rose to 2.3 percent from 2.29 percent the previous day. The Rex pension index fell by 0.2 percent to 125.59 points. The Bund future fell 0.35 percent to 135.82 points.
