The Dax continues to weaken: After a shortened trading week, the leading German index started the weekend with a large daily loss on Friday.
Fear of rising interest rates pushed investors onto the defensive on Friday. Given the high Inflation and economic risks, the yield on ten-year Bunds climbed to its highest level in almost seven years.
In the USA, the signals are clearly pointing to interest rate hikes. Another risk factor came with the presidential election in France on Sunday. A victory for the right-wing extremist candidate Marine Le Pen could “lead to significant upheavals on the financial markets,” warned the Landesbank Helaba.
The Dax lost 2.48 percent to 14,142.09 points after two strong trading days. With this biggest daily loss in six weeks, the interim gains on a weekly basis were waste again. Share prices also fell in the second row of stock exchanges: the MDax for medium-sized stocks lost 2.05 percent to 30,800.16 points.
Tech stocks under particular pressure
Technology-heavy growth stocks are considered to be particularly hard hit by rising interest rates. Against this background, German online companies were like Delivery Hero 
Zalando or Hellofresh with up to minus 5.7 percent among the losers in the Dax.
The season of quarterly reports, which has gone well so far, brought mixed news before the weekend: SAP, which is also assigned to the tech sector -Shares fell 2 percent on a disappointing profit margin.
But there was also better news: The retail group Metro looks more positively at the current financial year, which gave the share a price gain of a good five percent.
Adler Group in the focus of investors
An optimistic outlook from the Swiss building materials group Holcim pulled shares in the cement manufacturer Heidelbergcement with up. With a plus of 0.8 percent, the papers were the only winners among the 40 Dax stocks.
Covestro were only visually at the bottom of the leading index, because the shares of the plastics group were traded ex-dividend. The same applied to the automotive supplier Schaeffler in SDax .
After an early jump in the price of the Adler Group by 20 percent, the profit melted down to a meager percent at the close of trading. The result of the investigation by the auditors from KPMG initially provided relief for investors. The real estate group now sees itself relieved of allegations of systematic fraud. After the initial jump in price, however, investors took profits again.
Europe’s stock exchanges close in the red
Stock markets across Europe came under pressure ahead of the weekend. The EuroStoxx 50 lost 2.24 percent to 3,840.01 points. The French Cac 40 recorded a similarly high loss at the London FTSE 100 the minus was a little smaller. In New York there was the leading index Dow Jones Industrial at the European close of trading also fell significantly.
The euro, which was in high demand the day before, slipped on the foreign exchange market down to $1.0785 in the evening. The European Central Bank had previously set the reference rate at 1.0817 (Thursday: 1.0887) dollars. The dollar thus cost 0.9245 (0.9185) euros.
On the bond market, the current yield rose from 0.79 percent on the previous day to 0.83 percent. The pension index Rex fell 0.24 percent to 135.81 points. The Bund future fell by 0.29 percent to 153.30 points in the evening.