DAX 
At times, the Dax lost 1.2 percent to 17,626 points at the end of the week, while the EuroSToxx50 fell by 1.1 percent. The Asian stock markets also fell. The situation in the Middle East is keeping the markets on tenterhooks, said Thomas Altmann from QC Partners. "The fear of further escalation and, in fact, of a never-ending spiral of violence and retaliation is huge." According to state media, Iran repelled an airstrike in the center of the country on Friday night and shot down three drones. Insiders spoke of an attack by Israel on the Islamic Republic.
However, a senior Iranian representative told the Reuters news agency that a foreign origin of the incident had not been confirmed. Immediate retaliatory measures were not planned. Israeli action had been expected for days after Iran attacked the country directly for the first time last weekend with hundreds of drones and missiles, almost all of which were intercepted.
oil price shoots up significantly
The great nervousness in view of the unclear political situation in the Middle East also made itself felt on the commodities market. Brent North Sea oil and WTI US oil briefly rose in price by more than four percent to 90.75 and 86.28 dollars per barrel respectively. Investors fear that a further escalation in the Middle East could disrupt oil supplies and cause prices to rise further. In the event of a conflagration in the region, the oil price is likely to serve as a barometer of how monetary policy will develop in the future due to higher inflationary risks and thus also the financial markets, said Jürgen Molnar from RoboMarkets.
In the first three months of the year, hopes of imminent interest rate cuts in the USA and the eurozone in particular had driven the stock markets upwards. However, many now doubt that the long-awaited turnaround in interest rates will happen any time soon, at least at the US Federal Reserve. In view of the sluggish inflation in the US, monetary watchdog Raphael Bostic recently even ruled out the possibility of an interest rate hike. Molnar warned that the toxic combination of interest rate and war fears could ultimately turn the correction on the stock market, which still looks completely healthy today, into a trend reversal. The DAX has already fallen by around four percent since the beginning of April.
SARTORIUS SHARES CONTINUE TO SLIDE
Among the individual stocks, Sartorius continued its downward slide with a loss of 3.6 percent in the Dax. They had already lost more than 15 percent on Thursday following disappointing quarterly figures. On the Paris stock exchange, the surprisingly strong increase in sales at L'Oreal in the first quarter led to optimism in the sector. Shares in the French cosmetics group rose by more than six percent at their peak. The shares of cosmetics manufacturer Beiersdorf, which were traded ex-dividend on Friday, were among the few winners on the DAX with a gain of 0.6 percent.
At the end of the week, Bitcoin investors were talking about the so-called halving. This is "one of the biggest events in the crypto sector this year", said Chris Gannatti from asset manager WisdomTree, which sells exchange-traded Bitcoin funds. For crypto enthusiasts, this event, which takes place roughly every four years, makes a coveted commodity scarcer and thus increases its value. Critics, on the other hand, describe it as a simple technical change hyped up by speculators to drive up prices in the short term. A few hours before the expected halving, the world's largest cyber currency was trading up 1.5 percent at 64,459 dollars on Friday lunchtime. Fears of an escalation in the Middle East had caused Bitcoin to briefly slip below the psychologically important USD 60,000 mark during the night.
(Report by: Daniela Pegna, Assistance: Anika Ross; Edited by Hans Busemann; If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets)).
