OpinionDax review

Major changes in the Dax family

The increase of the cap limit to 15 percent will lead to major changes in the Dax and TecDax from March 18. In the TecDax, the weighting of SAP, Infineon and Deutsche Telekom will climb to 15 percent.

Major changes in the Dax family

At first glance, it looks as if little has changed in the scheduled March review of the Dax family. Zalando still made it to 46th place in the current Dax ranking and thus remains in the top league according to the criteria. This prevented Lufthansa, which is in 39th place in the ranking, from climbing back up. Well, Rational was surprisingly dropped from the MDax because it violated the recommendations of the German Corporate Governance Code. But since that this should be "cured" after the Annual General Meeting on May 8, nothing stands in the way of Rational's return to the MDax.

From March 18, however, the cap limit in the Dax family will also be raised from 10% to 15%. And this will result in huge changes to the weightings. SAP's weighting in the Dax will increase significantly. The latest calculations by analysts already put SAP at around 13% in the Dax. Investors who track the Dax must now buy SAP if they have not already done so and if they are permitted to do so by their regulations. Siemens could also soon exceed the 10% threshold. And there is definitely room for SAP and Siemens to increase their weighting towards 15%. The Dax is therefore becoming even more of a blue chip index than before, and its tech share is growing.

Better performance due to higher weightings?

However, the increase in the cap to 15% affects the entire Dax family. This is likely to lead to major changes in the TecDax in particular. As Achim Matzke from Matzke-Research has calculated, the significance of the heavyweights SAP, Deutsche Telekom and Infineon in the TecDax will increase from 10% to 15% from March 18. The weighting of Siemens Healthineers will also increase to more than 11%. On the other hand, the smaller tech stocks represented in the TecDax are likely to lose weight.

But does the higher weighting of the large stocks in the TecDax also deliver a better performance? Matzke refers to the Nasdaq, where the heavyweights have certainly led to an outperformance of the Nasdaq 100.