(technical replay)

FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - Thanks to a new recovery attempt on the US Borsen, the Dax has saved itself into the profit zone on Thursday. After the recent turbulence on financial markets around the globe, the German leading index had recovered on Wednesday for the first time since the beginning of August and recouped its losses from the start of the week. It has now stabilized further, gaining 0.37 per cent to 17,680.40 points. Robust weekly US labor market data provided support. Overall, however, the stock markets are still in choppy waters.

According to chief market analyst Jochen Stanzl from the broker CMC Markets, the 17,400-point mark is an important technical support level, meaning that a weekly close below this level would put additional downward pressure on the DAX. At the same time, stock markets are generally in "the seasonally weakest time for equities all year", which is why a sustained bottoming out of the Dax is not expected until the beginning of October.

In addition to US recession worries and fears of war in the Middle East, the global price slide was triggered above all by extensive speculative transactions on the currency markets after expectations regarding monetary policy in the USA and Japan changed. This was a bull market correction "driven more by technical factors, the sale of leveraged positions, than by fundamental factors", summarized Jefferies analyst Christopher Wood.

The MDax of medium-sized companies lost 0.52 percent to 24,106.62 points on Thursday. Across Europe, most indices closed close to their previous day's levels, while in the USA the Dow Jones Industrial rose by around 1.5 percent and the technology-heavy Nasdaq stock market even recovered by just over 2 percent./ck/he