Dax down - Hong Kong crisis weighed down

Frankfurt / Main (dpa) - According to experts, the Hong Kong crisis is also causing uncertainty on the German stock market. In the first trading hour, the Dax lost 1.53 percent on Friday to 11,600.97 points.

Before the long Pentecost weekend, investors played it safe. The easing measures in the Corona crisis moved into the background.

The day before, the Dax had reached its highest level since early March at 11,813 points. For the month of May, there is an increase of 6.8 percent.

After the Hong Kong crisis had recently mainly affected the development of the oil price and had not yet played a role in the stock market, this seems to be changing somewhat today, Helaba stock experts wrote in their daily outlook. The Hong Kong theme had also weighed on the previous day on Wall Street, and profits were erased in late trading.

In the ranks behind the Dax, the MDax of medium-sized German stocks fell on Friday by 1.10 percent to 25,352.09 points. The EuroStoxx 50 as the leading index of the euro zone lost 1.3 percent.

Despite international criticism, China's People's Congress approved plans for a new security law in Hong Kong. The project would be the most extensive encroachment on the actually guaranteed autonomy of Hong Kong. The United States is now threatening the People's Republic with sanctions and is very concerned. President Donald Trump wants to comment on the conflict with China this Friday.

Profit-taking took place on Friday, especially in the tourism, automotive and banking sectors. In the Dax, Lufthansa was very weak at minus 3.9 percent. Continental, Daimler and Volkswagen sometimes slipped similarly strongly. Continental was also graded "Equal-weight" by Morgan Stanley. Volkswagen is meanwhile pushing its electric offensive in China with investments worth billions. The authors of the daily Bernecker-Börsenbrief consider the Wolfsburg strategically most clearly positioned among the German automakers.

At the end of the Dax, the shares of the utility company Eon were minus 5.5 percent, but this had to do with the distribution of the dividend of EUR 0.46 per share.

The shares of the fashion group Hugo Boss suffered from two grades in the MDax. Both Jefferies and DZ Bank put their thumbs on "Hold". The boss titles lost more than six percent.

After a share placement and a grading by Jefferies, Encavis' papers fell by almost two percent in the SDax. The Heidecker family, as the major shareholder of the wind and solar park operator, had sold almost three million shares on the previous day.