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So much for destroying capital: if you got in late enough, you could even earn money with the shares of Telekom boss Tim Höttges.
The majority flowed through dividends.
Photo:
Oliver Berg / dpa / picture alliance
In the past 20 years, the German stock market has been about dividends.
Price gains and share buybacks achieved 1.7 trillion euros in value.
This is shown by a study by the Flossbach von Storch Research Institute, a think tank of the Cologne-based asset manager of the same name with around 70 billion euros in customer money under management.
The majority of the values created for investors, however, came from just a few stocks.
According to the study, twelve shares represented half of the total value created.
On the other hand, many other German stocks have not brought investors any money since January 2003.
According to the study, the Dax companies Siemens, SAP, Allianz, Mercedes-Benz Group and Deutsche Telekom created the greatest value for investors with over 75 billion euros each.
It was followed by BASF, BMW, Volkswagen (common shares), Munich Re and Deutsche Post.
Almost all of the shares are also among the major dividend payers in the Dax.
However, the asset growth of 1.7 trillion euros is also related to the fact that the period between January 2003 and January 2023 was chosen for the study: In March 2003, after the collapse of the Neuer Markt, the Dax was at a low of around 2500 points please.
The growth in the form of price gains and dividends is correspondingly high.
Deutsche Bank in last place
On the other hand, the largest value destroyers since 2003 include the papers of Commerzbank, the real estate financier Hypo Real Estate Holding and Deutsche Bank, which ended up in last place (1013) with almost 25 billion euros in value destruction.
The insolvent payment service provider Wirecard came in 938th place.
For the study, all 1,000 shares of German companies that were publicly traded in the Prime Standard and General Standard segments of Deutsche Börse between the beginning of 2003 and December 2022 were analyzed.
However, only German stocks were examined.
The European aerospace group Airbus, for example, was not part of the study and the industrial gases specialist Linde only until the merger with the US group Praxair.
Dividends create half of the investment income
The experts measured the value creation of the stocks against the yield on Bunds with a remaining maturity of one month in order to create a comparison with very short and safe investments - similar to keeping money in the account during the years of low interest rate policy.
Stock returns above those of such Bunds were defined as value creation.
The start of the study was set for January 2003, so that the stock market was examined from a low after the collapse of the Neuer Markt.
Another result: Of the total value created, a good half (52 percent) was attributable to dividends.
The remaining 41 percent came from price increases and 7 percent from share buybacks.
If you list the values created by all shares in a ranking, this results in a total of 1.7 trillion euros.
The amount is already reached with the first 118 shares, around 12 percent of the paper.
Some stocks behind it also created value, but their contribution was eaten up by loss-makers on balance.
"Only a few large, mostly well-managed companies in attractive sectors dominate the German stock market," says study author Philipp Immenkötter.
"They have been listed for a long time and have grown over the years."
However, the picture is also related to the period under investigation: If the analysis had been carried out before the collapse of the Neuer Markt, Deutsche Telekom, for example, would have done worse.
For investors, the weak performance of the vast majority of papers means that "great caution is required when choosing stocks," wrote author Immenkötter.
Just under 58 percent, i.e. six out of ten German stocks, generated value in the long term.
It is well known that investors take high risks with individual stocks, even in large corporations.
Experts therefore advise spreading stock market investments very broadly and globally - for example with funds or inexpensive exchange-traded index funds (ETFs) that do not require a fund manager.
Because very few investors - whether private investors or professionals - manage to find the profit makers on the stock exchanges in the long run.
cr/dpa
