27,001 for a morning, and a results table doing the talking

Germany’s DAX crossed 27,000 points for the first time on Thursday morning, touching a record of about 27,001 before slipping just below it by midday¹. The pan-European Stoxx 600 was up 0.4% at 665.79 by mid-morning, a fresh record after Wednesday’s record close². These are intraday figures; the settled closes come after 17:30 CET.

The reason was paperwork. Not a summit, not a speech. Stoxx 600 companies are on track for quarterly profit growth of 25%, the strongest in four years, according to LSEG data reported by Reuters, with energy companies a large part of it³. Siemens rose 4.6% after raising its medium-term targets and beating expectations in its fourth quarter²; its order intake passed €100 billion in a record financial year¹. Allianz, Munich Re and Merck KGaA all rose after results or raised outlooks^2,4.

Not everyone was rewarded. Telefónica fell 2.3% after cutting its full-year revenue forecast, and BAE Systems slipped 1.3% even after raising its free cash flow projection for the second time this year². The table cuts both ways, which is what makes it worth reading. In Europe, technology shares were down about 1.2% on average in the morning, as Nvidia’s leadership questions weighed on the sector⁴.

A quieter kind of rotation. “Many investors have come back to the DAX in search of solid companies,” said Thomas Altmann of QC Partners (our translation), as volatility rises in AI stocks; he noted the DAX has matched the Nasdaq 100’s performance with far smaller swings¹. Reuters reported that the Stoxx 600 has risen 4.7% so far this quarter, while the S&P 500 is down 0.4%³.

For you. A record is a number that one bad afternoon can take away. A raised profit guidance is a promise a company will have to show in its next report. If you hold a European index fund, it is the second kind that does the slow work. Nothing here is investment advice.