Market sentiment: “Positive signs instead of a stalemate”

February 18, 2026. FRANKFURT (Goldberg & Goldberg). For the third time in a row, the DAX initially suffered a setback between two sentiment surveys before ultimately recovering well. It managed to do so despite considerable headwinds from the US, which could have caused much more damage. There, interrupted only by the holiday last Monday, concerns remained alive about AI causing massive disruption to existing business models. Not to mention the planned massive increases in investment programs by major US technology companies, which stock markets across the Atlantic in particular have recently reacted to with great skepticism. This makes the performance of the German stock market barometer all the more remarkable, as it once again managed to shine with a weekly gain of 0.9 percent.

What appeared to be a stable stalemate in terms of prices in this country is probably due to the unabated demand from international fund managers. As the Bank of America fund manager survey for February published yesterday revealed, the eurozone – led by German stocks – has most likely benefited from capital inflows for three consecutive months. This time, a net 35 percent (previous month: 25 percent) of the fund managers surveyed said they were overweight in eurozone equities. At the same time, US equities saw a trend in the opposite direction. A net 22 percent of respondents said they were underweight in US equities (previous month: 3 percent) – a strong indication of a shift in equity investments from the US to Europe. Importantly, equities did not lose popularity globally compared with the previous month; as in the previous month, 48 percent of fund managers stated that they were overweight in this asset class.

Germany: an exceptional situation?

But in terms of sentiment, the stalemate between bulls and bears among institutional investors has also been resolved. Our Deutsche Börse Sentiment Index rose by 25 points to a new level of +25. At the same time, the bull camp gained 19 percentage points, with just over two-thirds of the new optimists coming from previously neutral investors and just under a third from former bears who have turned their positions around 180° from bearish to bullish, presumably in connection with modest profits.

The situation is quite different for private investors. Our Deutsche Börse Sentiment Index bucked the trend in this panel, falling by 2 points to a new level of +18. Apparently, there has been some minor profit-taking among the bulls. This applies primarily to those investors whom we did not survey via social media. Their sentiment has diverged from that of institutional investors, bucking the trend. On the other hand, the private investors we surveyed via social media have moved away from bearish positions, but all of them have shifted to neutral.

Slight upturn in sentiment

Today's survey shows that institutional investors have overtaken private investors in terms of optimism. This means that it was not only international investors who contributed to the stabilization of the DAX, as mentioned at the outset, but that the increase compared to the previous week was also due to domestic institutional investors. This quite significant shift in sentiment toward the positive has led to the highest Deutsche Börse Sentiment Index this year. However, this optimism is put into perspective when compared to the development of sentiment over a three-month period and, from this perspective, is only half as high as in absolute terms. From this relative perspective, optimism among private investors has actually fallen back to an almost neutral level.

Per se, today's optimism is therefore not a threat to the DAX, although profit-taking at times, possibly between 25,600 and 25,650 points, could cause headwinds. On the downside, however, the situation is less secure than before, as domestic demand has deteriorated in the event of a decline to a level probably around 24,700/24,750 points. However, there would be a much greater risk if, for whatever reason, the capital flows from abroad, from which the DAX has benefited particularly over the past three months, were to dry up at some point.

by Joachim Goldberg

February 18, 2026, © Goldberg & Goldberg for Deutsche Börse

The Deutsche Börse Sentiment Index ranges between -100 (total pessimism) and +100 (total optimism), with the transition from positive to negative values marking the neutral line.

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