KION shares
Upward trend in the equity markets
The German equity markets made significant price gains over the course of 2021. In March of the reporting year, the DAX exceeded 15,000 points for the first time. Over the year as a whole, it gained 15.8 percent and reached a record high of 16,251.13 points on November 17. The MDAX added 14.1 percent over the same period, almost matching the performance of the DAX for the year.
Particularly in the first half of 2021, the biggest companies on Germany’s stock markets benefited from strong growth and a disproportionately steep rise in corporate profits. The economy’s recovery from the slump triggered by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 had a positive impact on companies, as did the effects of cost-cutting and efficiency measures. However, hopes that the pandemic would soon be overcome were dashed in the second half of the year when case numbers started to go back up. Global bottlenecks in the supply of commodities and other products also escalated, thereby dampening the factors that were driving economic growth. Moreover, expectations were increasing that central banks – starting with the US Federal Reserve – would introduce more restrictive monetary policy in view of rising inflation. As a result, the DAX and MDAX trended sideways from the middle of the year onward.