Funds: Sales Dominate subdued trading

Open-end real estate funds remain under pressure, while mixed funds saw significantly higher trading volumes in August. One “classic” fund in particular stands out. In the equity segment, sales are dominating during this period of market weakness.

September 17, 2026. FRANKFURT (Deutsche Börse). Stock market traders report very low trading volumes in traditional investment funds over the past few weeks. In August, total trading volume on Deutsche Börse’s trading platforms amounted to only about 40 million euros. In July, it was just under 45 million euros, and in June, it was still around 50 million euros. Compared to the previous year, order book turnover has also declined by 5 percent. Open-end real estate funds are primarily responsible for this. Here, turnover has nearly halved year-over-year to around 6.9 million euros.

Real Estate Funds Remain Under Pressure

At the same time, selling pressure in this segment continues. Frank Wöllnitz of ICF Bank singles out DWS’s real estate funds in particular. The “grundbesitz europa” (DE0009807008), “grundbesitz global” (DE0009807057), and “grundbesitz Fokus Deutschland” (DE0009807081) funds have lost massive market value since the end of June. In his opinion, the news reports coming out of DWS in recent days are likely to be exacerbating the situation. “Keywords such as low market liquidity, fines, and redemption discounts have tended to create even greater selling pressure—especially when you consider that sales of real estate funds through KVGs are already subject to the well-known restrictions,” explains the trader.

In August, the consumer platform Finanztip once again advised investors to sell real estate funds on the stock market. In July, there had been net outflows of 591 million euros. By the end of July, these outflows had totaled 3.7 billion euros, and fund assets had fallen to just around 105 billion euros. Morningstar also notes that as of 2026, four open-end real estate funds have already suspended redemptions.

Balanced Funds See Strong Sales Growth

Balanced funds experienced a significant upswing last month. Here, sales rose by 46 percent year-over-year to 7.1 million euros. Their share of total sales reached a new annual high of nearly 18 percent. Wöllnitz attributes the higher sales primarily to a “classic” fund. He notes several purchases and sales for the FvS SICAV Multiple Opportunities fund from the fund management company Flossbach von Storch Invest (LU0323578657). There is also interest in Kapital Plus (DE0008476250), a mixed fund from Allianz Global Investors that has been in existence for several decades.

In the equity fund segment, the recent downward trend in the stock markets has been accompanied by an “enormous supply surplus” in fund trading, as reported by Matthias Präger of Baader Bank. On the sell lists for European markets, the main funds are the FF - European Growth (LU0048578792), the CT (Lux) European Smaller Companies (LU1864952335), and the DWS Aktien Strategie Deutschland (DE0009769869). The trader sees smaller purchases in the JPM Europe Equity Plus (LU0289089384).

On a global level, the trader made the largest sales in CoIQ Collective Intelligence (DE000A3C91C5) and ARERO - Der Weltfonds (LU0360863863). The main purchase was the Degussa Bank Portfolio Privat Aktiv (DE000A0MS7D8).