DAX 2022–2024: Anatomy of a Bottom — when fear was greatest

In September 2022 the DAX stands at 11,863 points. Gas rationing is openly debated, war rages, every forecast names the recession. For most people it was clear: this goes lower. Two years later the index stands at 20,523 — an all-time high. The low was not where the situation improved, but where fear was greatest.

This is the fifth case in the series — and the first on a German market. Gold and Nvidia show accumulation, Nasdaq distribution, Bitcoin the shakeout. Here the same principle on the lead index on our own doorstep: a bottom is not a point but a process — and it begins when the headlines are darkest.

The crime scene: where the data comes from

The data source is the DAX (^GDAXI) from Yahoo Finance, weekly timeframe, September 2021 to December 2024. It is the performance index — it includes dividends, so it sits higher than a pure price index; we state that openly so the numbers can be placed in context. The axis is linear in points, because the range (around 11,900 to 20,500) needs no logarithmic compression. Every value is checked against the raw data series.

Three findings carry the case.

Finding 1: The crash into the crisis

In November 2021 the DAX marks an all-time high at 16,290 points. Then comes 2022: war in Ukraine, exploding energy prices, the fastest rate-hike cycle in decades. The index loses around 27 percent by September 26, 2022 and bottoms at 11,863.

This is exactly the lesson no news anchor delivers: the low coincided with the greatest fear, not with the worst news still to come. While forecasts painted the winter blackout, the index stopped falling. Where sellers capitulate and supply is absorbed anyway, someone is accumulating.

Finding 2: The accumulation — and the reclaim of the old high

A bottom alone is not a trend. Over the months after the low, the DAX builds higher lows, an accumulation below the old high. The decisive, structurally readable moment comes on June 12, 2023: the weekly close is back above the 2021 all-time high for the first time — 16,358 over 16,290.

That is more than a round number. The old high was the resistance where the recovery could have failed. Reclaiming it means: resistance turns into support, the range is left to the upside, "recovery" turns into markup. Reading structure required no economic forecast for this — just the line and the weekly close above it.

Finding 3: The markup — to 20,523

From here it is markup. Higher highs, higher lows, up to the cycle high of 20,523 points in December 2024 — roughly 73 percent above the crisis low. The index climbed, as the saying goes, a wall of worry: carried by the demand that had built up at the bottom, while the majority still expected the recession.

The uncomfortable lesson

Nobody could know in September 2022 that 11,863 would be the low. Anyone selling that in hindsight as a sure bet is doing hindsight. What was readable in real time was not a macro turn but a sequence of plain structural facts:

• A crash that turned into a bottom at the very moment of maximum fear (higher lows from October 2022).
• A reclaim of the old all-time high on a weekly basis (June 2023).
• A markup that confirmed the demand built at the bottom.

None of these points requires forecasting the economy. They require reading the bottom as a process instead of waiting for the good news — which only arrives once the markup is long underway. And the honest addition: indices fall hard too, a 27 percent drawdown is real pain, and no recovery is guaranteed. What helps is not optimism but reading the structure.

Note: Forensic reconstruction of a closed case — not a forecast, not a trading signal, not investment advice. Data source ^GDAXI (Yahoo Finance), weekly close, performance index incl. dividends; ATH/low are intra-week extremes. The risk disclosure applies.

Five cases, five markets — commodity, US index, crypto, single stock, and now Germany's lead index. Always the same hand, always the same question to you: do you read the structure while fear obscures it, or only once the recovery is in the newspaper?