A good year on the stock market:
Despite Corona, the Dax is approaching its record high
Photo: DPA
The Dax could reach a record high this year.
With the Brexit deal and the US Corona aid package, two hanging games came to an end shortly before the end of the year during the Christmas break - and investors take courage from that.
The X-Dax, as an indicator for the German leading index, signaled an increase of 0.84 percent to 13,701 points around 45 minutes before the start of trading.
With this, the stock market barometer would iron out its brief price slide from last Monday.
The leading Eurozone index EuroStoxx 50 is expected to increase by 0.8 percent.
Shortly before the end of the Brexit transition phase, Great Britain and the European Union published their laboriously negotiated trade pact for the time afterwards.
This means that a protracted dispute is about to come to an end - as is the case in the USA, where the incumbent President Donald Trump gave up his most recent blockade and has now implemented a $ 900 billion corona stimulus package.
Dax, Dow Jones, Eurostoxx:
All indices and share prices at a glance
Window dressing the fund manager
But the sword of Damocles from the Corona situation continues to float above the market with hard cuts in everyday life.
There is hope on this point too, especially since vaccinations started in Germany at the weekend.
Investors have been looking forward to this for weeks: the Dax would be a record high above 13,795 points.
He had recently approached this to almost 20 points.
The experts at Commerzbank meanwhile remain cautious: "In Germany, the situation did not ease over the Christmas week. The decline in reported new infections is solely due to the reduced scope of tests. The number of corona patients receiving intensive medical treatment in German hospitals has continued to rise . "
The looming vaccine shortage could delay a return to normal.
Another reason for price movements that appear to be more random is the phenomenon of "window dressing".
Shortly before the end of the year, fund managers try to improve the visual appearance of their fund.
They either acquire papers that have grown particularly significantly in the past period.
Or they often sell titles that didn't do well.
Investors should keep an eye on the Deutsche Post papers on Monday.
Company boss Frank Appel was confident in the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung" with a view to the targeted record profit this year.
On the trading platform Tradegate, the shares rose by 2.5 percent compared to last Wednesday's closing price.
Asia's stock exchanges are up
The most important Asian stock markets were mostly friendly at the beginning of the week.
While Japan and China's mainland stock exchanges went up, Hong Kong posted a slight loss.
The news that US President Donald Trump has now implemented a corona stimulus package decided by Congress with a bipartisan majority proved to be a course support.
In doing so, he also released part of the federal government's budget of around 1.4 trillion dollars - otherwise there would have been a so-called "shutdown" on Tuesday, ie an at least partial standstill in the authorities and government business.
The Chinese CSI-300 index with the 300 most important stocks on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges recently gained 0.44 percent to 5064.41 points.
The Hang Seng Index in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, meanwhile, fell 0.09 percent to 26,363.45 points in late trading.
The Japanese Nikkei 225 closed 0.74 percent stronger at 26,854.03 points.
The fact that Japanese industrial production surprisingly stagnated in November after a five-month recovery left the leading Tokyo index cold.
Alibaba shares remain under pressure
Alibaba stocks fell almost eight percent in Hong Kong, even though Amazon competitor had increased its share buyback program from six to ten billion US dollars.
The internet giant is under increasing pressure from the Chinese competition watchdog.
The Chinese central bank asked the company Ant Group of investor Jack Ma to concentrate on its original core business again.
The financial company should "clean up" its business with lending, insurance and asset management, as it was called in a statement from the central bank (People's Bank of China) on Sunday.
Instead, Ant should go back to its roots as a provider of payment services.
A few weeks ago, the company's IPO, in which Alibaba holds a third, had already failed.
Euro hardly changed
The euro was hardly changed.
The European Central Bank (ECB) had set the reference rate on Tuesday afternoon at 1.2239 (Monday: 1.2173) dollars.
The euro came under significant pressure in the course of trading on Tuesday and fell below $ 1.22.
Oil prices remain under pressure
Oil prices picked up on their recent losses on Wednesday amid simmering economic worries.
A barrel (159 liters) of North Sea Brent cost 49.37 US dollars that morning.
That was 71 cents less than the day before.
The price of a barrel of US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) fell 66 cents to $ 46.36.
Last week, oil prices had reached their highs since March.
la / dpa