"When we talk to China, we get an airport; when we talk to Germany, we get a lecture." - Another round of Germany bashing
A few days ago, I read a very interesting article about Germany and many of our problems in Manager Magazin:
It mentions 3 keywords in detail: Morality, Prices & Technology
Morality:
The quote in the headline comes from the (Nigerian) Director-General of the WTO after she was invited by our Foreign Minister.
Many countries and regions of the world do not want to receive a moral lecture every time they place an order or invest in or with Germany. So they prefer to buy from other countries that simply want to do business
Prices:
The article mentions that BASF $BAS (+2,29%) and Lanxess $LXS (+1,86%) will give up their ammonia production in Germany because it is simply no longer economically viable given the energy prices here. Both companies will now operate most of their production in China.
Not only are we creating a further dependency on China, we are also doing massive damage to the environment. Ammonia is produced in China in a much less environmentally friendly way, which will increase CO2 emissions by a factor of 10.
Winner: China
Loser: Germany and the environment
Technology and "digital sovereignty":
While we don't seem to care about sovereignty in many cases (see the example of ammonia from above), we absolutely want to achieve it in the digital realm and are daring to go it alone here without the Americans (who are miles ahead).
Among others, our misappointed minister of the interior Nancy Faeser only wants to use home-grown software for the police - so they are tinkering with something themselves instead of relying on good, functioning software.
According to the article, the Bundeswehr also does not want to use software from abroad, unlike most other partners.
-> In the end, we will probably burn a lot of money again and have to continue to rely on fax and the like
As we are on a stock market platform here and not a political platform, I don't want to go into detail about the political view (don't vote for the Greens 😉), but how we as investors can deal with this.
And there is one way in particular: invest as little as possible in Germany and, if you do, only very selectively. My portfolio therefore only contains the following German stocks:
- Allianz
$ALV (+0,8%) As we Germans are known to be very security-conscious people, it is clear that we are particularly good at one thing: Insurance. As the largest or one of the largest insurers in the world, Allianz is therefore a good German share for me. In addition, my purchase in the corona low at €120 has given me a personal dividend yield of almost 10% - Bechtle
$BC8 (+3,29%) If we want to make progress with digitalization, we need system houses like Bechtle. They digitize companies or even government agencies on both the software and hardware side - in addition, the company regularly increases its sales and dividends - Encavis
$ECV (+0,73%) The topic of energy will be with us for a long time to come, and I believe that companies with a strong or pure focus on renewable energies can benefit from this. I think Encavis is well positioned here - Sartorius
$SRT3 (+0,16%) In my view, pharmaceuticals will be one of the major growth areas alongside tech due to demographic developments, and we need laboratories for pharmaceutical research. As a laboratory supplier, Sartorius is therefore also operating in an exciting environment, which is currently affected by the end of the pandemic - during Corona there was a lot of purchasing, these stocks are now being reduced first. With Thermo Fisher $TMO (+1,27%) is another company from this sector in my portfolio, also with similar problems
Regardless of these companies, I don't think there are too many exciting German stocks left. Munich Re $MUV2 (+1,2%) could still be mentioned, and Porsche $P911 (+0,6%) could also be an exciting brand and therefore share. Deutsche Börse might also be exciting $DB1 (+0,1%) and, as very conservative stocks, possibly Telekom $DTE (-1,29%) or Deutsche Post / DHL $DHL (-1,71%)
What do you think of the points mentioned in the article?
And what are still "must have" stocks from Germany for you?
