China fears rattle Dax stocks
Germany's Dax index is unusually skewed towards China, and has suffered some major swings due to uncertainty in the Chinese economy.
"The Dax is such a sensitive index it gets whipsawed by perceptions of Chinese growth," says Rupert Welchman of Union Bancaire Prive. Germany's blue-chip index has suffered a nasty collapse this year. Like other European markets, August was its worst month since 2011 it fell by more than 9%.
But unlike its major counterparts, it lost more than 20% from its April peak amid the panic over China, fulfilling the definition of a bear market.
The index is prone to big swings because it is among the world's most cyclical markets most of the companies in the index are in industries sensitive to the economic cycle. It's hardly the only market whose companies make most of their sales abroad (around 75% in its case). But it is unusually skewed to China.
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Goldman Sachs estimates that China accounts for just over 10% of Dax firms' sales, compared to 6.4% for the FTSE 100 and a eurozone stockmarket average of 5.8%. Carmakers have looked especially exposed: Daimler sells 20% of its cars in China, and it is VW's biggest market.
But is the gloom overdone? For one thing, China has unleashed more stimulus, suggesting that the data should soon improve, and China offers plenty of long-term potential in the form of growing consumption over time. And while other major emerging markets, such as Brazil and Russia, have run out of steam, the global economy continues to grow, led by a firmer American economy.
More to the point, the weak euro is crucial. A study by EY found that around two-thirds of the jump in Dax companies' second-quarter turnover to record levels was due to the weak euro. With the European Central Bank ready to prolong or increase its quantitative easing programme to support the European recovery, weakness in the euro seems unlikely to reverse any time soon.
Printed money always ends up in asset markets. It's also worth noting that the yuan is still up by 10% against the euro this year, so there has been little damage to German exports' competitiveness in China following the devaluation.
What's more, the German market's 2015 price/earnings ratio is now 12.7, lower than that of its major counterparts. In short, the German market could be worth a look. The db-x Trackers DAX UCITS ETF (LSE: XDDX) tracks the Dax, while Wirtschaftswoche suggests buying shares in established blue chips with impressive long-term records, such as chemicals giant BASF (Xetra: BAS), which yields 4%.
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Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.
After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.
His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.
Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.
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