Main DAX share owners are outside Europe

The leading German corporations such as Adidas, Mercedes-Benz and Siemen are mostly owned by foreigners. An analysis by the auditing firm EY revealed that at least 53 percent of all shares in the DAX index were held by foreign investors in 2021. 

This may be even underestimated as German investors can be clearly assigned just under 30 percent of the stock portfolio. Their share ownership dropped 0.6 percentage points from the previous year. On the other side of the coin, the share ownership of North American investors increased by 1.1 to 22.7 percent. 

The larger share of foreign investors can explain a statistical anomaly in the DAX index: over the last 30 years, the index's growth was obtained after the close of stock exchanges or before trading session the next day, that is, during trading hours in the U.S. and Asia.