After the recent record rally, DAX investors held back on Friday. The leading German index ended trading at 26,749.95 points. A minus of 0.08 percent.
In view of the recent price gains, this is a good and healthy move, said Thomas Altmann from QC Partners. On Thursday, the DAX surpassed the 27,000 point mark for the first time in its history. Over the week, the stock market barometer has increased significantly, namely 4.2 percent.
An important reason is the reporting season for the third quarter that has just ended. According to a current analysis by the consulting firm EY, 27 DAX companies have further increased their profits. The companies examined recorded an operating profit of 37.7 billion euros in the third quarter. This is an increase of 4.6 percent compared to the previous year.
The sales of the DAX companies examined rose by 4.5 percent to around 460.5 billion euros. "Growth is now based on several pillars: energy, infrastructure, defense and technology are developing dynamically," said Henrik Ahlers, Chairman of the EY Management Board. "However, the automotive industry remains under considerable pressure and is clouding the overall picture."
Chief economist Edgar Walk from Metzler Asset Management believes that the global upswing will continue in the coming year. This should then also pull many DAX stocks up further. Analysts at DZ BANK even see the DAX climbing to 28,500 points by the end of next year.
In the USA, the most important indices were in the red at the close of trading in Germany. The US leading index Dow Jones was around 0.3 percent in the red, but is heading towards a weekly plus.
The technology-heavy Nasdaq 100, on the other hand, continued to lose around two percent. The day before, the major US stock market barometers had fallen slightly.
What was seen as rather positive was the fact that producer prices in the USA rose less sharply in October than economists had expected, by 6.5 percent compared to the previous year. Because producer prices are reflected in consumer prices with a time lag, the figures are important for the US Federal Reserve.
According to CME Group's Fed Watch tool, financial markets have a 90 percent expectation that the U.S. Federal Reserve will raise interest rates at its next meeting in December to keep inflation in check.
Overall, many investors remained cautious. Also due to US President Donald Trump's statements about the Iran war. After hopes of a possible end to the war had increased slightly in recent days, Trump wrote on his "Truth Social" platform at the end of the week that no agreement with Iran was needed.
In view of a massive global outage of Microsoft services such as Outlook and Teams, the US software company's shares have also come under pressure. The shares fell by up to 1.7 percent in US trading, but then recovered again.
The US software company is apparently not assuming a cyber attack, but a faulty update could be the cause.
Shares in the US semiconductor industry came under considerable pressure on Friday. The prices of industry giants such as AMD, Applied Materials and Broadcom lost almost ten percent a few hours after trading began in the USA.
The shares of the chip giant Nvidia, which is still in the spotlight, also fell further, by almost four percent. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index lost 5.7 percent.
The abrupt departure of Nvidia boss Jensen Huang after his scandalous affair with a suspected Chinese spy became known has a stressful effect. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Mike Johnson, has spoken out in favor of stricter controls on exports of high-performance semiconductors to China.
The chaos at the flagship AI company Nvidia and the uncertainty about the future of the AI business are also dragging down the prices of companies that benefit from the AI hype in Germany. The semiconductor manufacturer Infineon lost 4.3 percent in the DAX.
Investors are concerned about what Jensen Huang's resignation means for future AI development. Kathleen Brooks, director of research at XTB, said: "There is now no one more passionate about AI than Jensen Huang was."
For Rheinmetall, which not so long ago was the model company on the stock exchange, things continued to decline today. The shares of Germany's largest defense company fell to their lowest level since February 2025. In the afternoon they recorded a further price decline of 2.4 percent and were at 754.20 euros.
In mid-January, shares had reached a record high of 1,966 euros. Since then: 60 percent price loss. The main reasons are postponed major orders and lowering of annual forecasts. The reason for the latest losses was a negative analyst comment on the Bundeswehr frigate project F127. There are apparently fears that the project could be delayed or be smaller.
