MARKET RECAP: FEBRUARY

Now that February is over, let's recap and see how the market news developed on the week-to-week basis.?Here is a breakdown of everything you need to know:

WEEK 1 (31/01 - 06/02)

USA: Apple drives Tech Market Turnaround

You may have noticed that tech stocks experienced a relatively strong downtrend in January. The current reporting season (the time when publicly traded companies release their financial results) has been filled with significant turbulence so far. Netflix shares, for example, plummeted by 20%

Apple, on the other hand, was able to convince investors with its business figures and recorded a plus of over 5% last week. And this despite the ongoing chip crisis. Did you know that Apple alone needs more chips for the production of its iPhones, MacBooks etc. than the entire automotive industry worldwide?

?Now I'm sure you're wondering how a single stock can affect an entire industry. It is important to understand that Apple is currently the most valuable company and has strong weightings in the US tech indices. For example, Apple's weight in the S&P500 is 7.1% and in the Nasdaq100 we are talking about 11.6%.

WEEK 2 (07/02 - 13/02)?

Germany: Interest rate fears weigh on the market

At the end of the week, it was that time again: the ECB chief, Christine Lagarde announced at the press conference that interest rates remain at the current record low. But at the same time, she kept the doors open for a possible rate hike and that worried investors. But how exactly are individual sectors actually performing under interest rate fears? When interest rate fears grow, the euro automatically becomes more expensive. Investors then increasingly ask for euro investments and, as always, high demand = high price.

If the euro becomes more expensive, then demand for products from the euro zone falls and this is precisely the reason why export-strong companies such as BMW (car manufacturer), Continental (automotive supplier) and adidas (sporting goods manufacturer) lost value over the weekend. However, financial services providers such as Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank in particular are benefiting from the interest rate fears. Why? When interest rates rise, so do banks' earnings opportunities. So if you hold financial service companies in your portfolio, you could enjoy a nice performance this week.

WEEK 3 (14/02 - 20/02)??

EU: Plans a satellite program from space

This new project is expected to cost a total of EUR 6 billion and provide more EU citizens with access to secure and affordable communications. It will also serve to improve surveillance, defence and Internet connectivity. Above all, this new project aims to avoid dependence on third-party providers, other countries such as America or China, and private satellite providers such as Starlink (Elon Musk, Tesla) or Kuiper (Jeff Bezoz, Amazon).

Maybe you caught it last summer: The severe flooding in the Ahrtal (Germany, western part) meant that the Internet stopped working in many areas. Within a few days, Musk and his team at Starlink managed to get three dozen stations ready so that local people could reconnect to the Internet via satellite. In the future, the EU wants to do that itself

By the way, the goal of independence is also being pursued with the newly passed "Chips Act." A total of EUR 45 billion is to be spent on the European production of high-performance chips in order to solve the supply chain bottlenecks and to no longer be dependent on other countries. Have you given any thought to investing in European tech securities? Often there is some overweight in U.S. stocks. Take a look at your portfolio!

WEEK 4 (21/02 - 27/02)??

Global: Fear of war makes markets tremble

You couldn't possibly get past this topic this week: fear of war in Europe caused by the Ukraine crisis. These are frightening images that reached us from the Ukrainian-Russian border area at the end of last week and the beginning of this week. And it was precisely this critical situation that caused a sell-off on the stock market, dragging down the major leading indices such as the DAX and the Euro Stoxx 50 by up to 4% for days.

Asian investors were also very unsettled by European news, with the Hang Seng (Hong Kong) and Nikkei (Japan) losing 3% and 2.1% respectively on Monday. Many investors took refuge in the safe haven of gold and oil after the stock sell-off, as fears circulated those sanctions against Russia would lead to energy supply restrictions

On days like this, investors need to have strong nerves and not be rattled by price movements. An old stock market saying goes, "Political stock markets have short legs." Meaning: Politically motivated sell-offs on the stock market often recover quickly. If you invest for the long term, you don't have to worry about such price drops!

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