Facts from more than 35 years of DAX

The DAX is one of the world's most important indices. With the 40 largest companies by stock market turnover and market capitalization, it shows the performance of German shares - and has done so for decades. 

Since 1988, the DAX has served as a mirror image for the development of the 40 largest listed companies in Germany and has firmly established itself as the leading index for the German economy. The index is also one of the most popular underlyings for financial products worldwide. There are 11 Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) on the index, which manage total assets of more than 14 billion euros (as of May 2023). DAX futures and options are among the most popular derivatives. The index is also the underlying for numerous structured products.

The DAX reached its all-time high only shortly before its 35th birthday. On 16 June 2023, the DAX reached almost 16,427 points in the course of trading.  The record for the highest daily gain has remained unbroken since 2008. On 3 October 2008, the DAX experienced the largest daily gain in its history with 11.40 percent.

Facts about the DAX

• The first publication of the DAX dates from 1 July 1988 and showed an index level of 1,163.52 points. At that time, the index was calculated every 60 seconds. This was an important building block for success, since until the 1980s the indices in Frankfurt were only calculated once a day - after the close of trading. And not everyone used the same prices as a basis.

• Frank Mella, then editor of the Börsen-Zeitung, is regarded as the inventor of the DAX. One day his publisher asked him to come up with a stock market index for Germany as a financial centre. The publisher was so enthusiastic about the exposé that he showed it to some banking experts: the DAX was born.The DAX was named by Manfred Zaß, later Chairman of the Board of Management of DekaBank and for many years a member of the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Börse AG.

• The DAX measures the performance of the 40 largest and most liquid companies on the German stock market and represents around 80 percent of the market capitalization of listed stock corporations in Germany. The following companies joined the DAX 35 years ago: Allianz, BASF, Bayer, Bayerische Hypotheken- und Wechselbank, Bayerische Vereinsbank, BMW, Commerzbank, Continental, Daimler-Benz, Degussa, Deutsche Babcock, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Lufthansa, Dresdner Bank, Feldmühle Nobel, Henkel, Hoechst, Karstadt, Kaufhof, Linde, MAN, Mannesmann, Nixdorf, RWE, Schering, Siemens, Thyssen, Veba, Viag, Volkswagen.
   
• The DAX is published both as a performance and a price index. In the performance index, the dividends of the companies included in the DAX are reinvested mathematically; in the price index, the dividends are not taken into account.
   
• In 1995, the privatisation of the Deutsche Bundespost authority gave rise to three companies: Deutsche Post AG, Deutsche Telekom AG and Postbank AG. Two of them are still listed in the DAX today.
   
• The MDAX is introduced in 1996. It comprises 50 stocks from classic sectors which follow the DAX stocks in the ranking according to market capitalization and stock exchange turnover.
   
• Deutsche Telekom's largest IPO in the history of the DAX was in November 1996. 713 million shares flushed the equivalent of €13 billion into the coffers of the former state-owned group. Demand exceeded supply by a factor of five. Porsche AG went public in September 2022. This was the largest IPO in Germany after the Telekom listing.

• The largest merger in the DAX was that of Daimler-Benz and the US carmaker Chrysler. It is sealed on 7 May 1998. The merger "among equals" on the basis of a market capitalization of 166 billion D-Mark is at this time the largest merger of all times in the automotive industry. Daimler shareholders hold about 57 percent of the new company, Chrysler shareholders the remaining 43 percent.
   
• From June 1999, the DAX will be calculated exclusively from Xetra® prices because it is clear that fully electronic trading will be the trend of the future. The SDAX® will also be introduced this year.
   
• Euro notes will be introduced in 2000. The Deutsche Mark is the sole means of payment for the last time.
   
• The DAX suffers its biggest annual loss in 2002, when it collapsed by 44 percent.
   
• The TecDAX® is introduced in 2003. It contains the stocks of the 30 technology companies that follow the DAX in terms of stock exchange turnover and market capitalization.
   
• The year 2003 sees the decline of the Neuer Markt. After the bursting of the speculation bubble in the technology sector (dotcom bubble), the DAX fell from a high of 8,136.16 in March 2000 to a closing price of 2,202.96 points by 12 March 2003. From spring 2003, however, the DAX will be on its way up again. New highs were reached in July 2007: 8,151.57 points on 13 July 2007.
   
• On 13 October 2008, the DAX experienced the largest daily gain in its history, 11.40 percent. Incidentally, the biggest daily loss was almost 34 years ago.  On 16 October 1989, the DAX lost 12.81 percent.

• In October 2008, Volkswagen was the most valuable company in the world for a few hours when the price of the paper shot up to over €1,000 at times. The trigger was a so-called short squeeze - a market situation in which a price is increasingly driven upwards by covering purchases, also known as "shorties" - in the middle of the takeover battle between Porsche and Volkswagen.

• In March 2020, the DAX 50 ESG Index will be launched. The index tracks the 50 largest and most liquid companies in the German stock market that are not active in the business areas of controversial weapons, tobacco, nuclear energy, thermal coal or armaments and that have comparatively good ESG scores.

• In September 2021, the German benchmark index DAX will be increased to 40 stocks, which is a significant development of the index and the German capital market. At the same time, the MDAX will be reduced from 60 to 50 members.  The following stocks will be added from the MDAX: Airbus SE, Zalando SE, Siemens Healthineers AG, Symrise AG, HelloFresh SE, Sartorius AG Vz, Porsche Automobil Holding, Brenntag SE, Puma SE and Qiagen N.V.

• A newcomer, who was still a young company without a stock exchange listing when it started out on the DAX, has had a steep career since then: SAP was promoted to the DAX in 1995 and has since then seen an impressive price development to become the most valuable company.

• Since the DAX was launched on July 1, 1988, 11 companies have been continuously listed: Allianz, BASF, Bayer, BMW, Daimler (formerly Daimler-Benz), Deutsche Bank, E.ON (formerly Veba and Viag), Henkel, RWE, Siemens and Volkswagen.
   
• Those who entered at the peak in 1988 have since achieved an average return of over 7 percent per year.

Read also the interview with Serkan Batir, Managing Director DAX, on the occasion of DAX's 35th birthday.

June 2023, © Deutsche Börse AG