Dialog International

Equity culture catching on in Germany

I've written before about the hesitancy of German savers to buy stocks as a wealth-building strategy.  While more than 50% of Americans have at least some stocks or equity funds in their portfolio in Germany the number is below 20%.  That imbalance is (slowly) beginning to change for several reasons.  For one, bank savings accounts - traditionally the preferred investment product - now yield zero or even negative interest income thanks to the monetary policy of the European Central Bank.  Also, several mobile apps such as Trade Republic have launched that make it very easy to trade stocks at low or zero commission using a smartphone. And stocks in Germany - and internationally - have performed very well, even during the pandemic.

"Risk-averse Europeans have embraced share trading during the coronavirus pandemic, encouraged by soaring stock markets, rising household savings and the popularity of low-cost trading platforms. The number of people in Germany who own shares directly or via funds rose by 2.2m to 12.4m last year — with the sharpest rise among those aged under 30, according to a recent report by the Deutsches Aktieninstitut, which represents German publicly traded companies. This is a significant shift for a country with relatively low levels of share ownership and where people are traditionally conservative with their money — often preferring to earn meagre interest on bank deposits rather than invest in shares."

To be sure, much of the growth in new investors has come from younger Germans (under 30 yrs old).  Some question whether these young traders will have  a long-term commitment to the market, or if they are just following a fad.  We've seen this also in the US with the rise of Robinhooda commission-free mobile app that has gamified stock trading. Young traders - driven by a Reddit sub-forum, have piled into questionable trades with little or no understanding of stock fundamentals. The concern is that many Robinhood users are more gamblers than investors and will abandon the market once they experience significant losses.  There is the same concern in Germany that the young users of Trade Republic or JustTrade are "Zocker" - gambling on risky trades and are bound to lose money.  But there is no such thing as risk-free stock trading, and most of these new investors will see the long-term benefits of having a portfolio of stocks:

Nur ein kleiner Teil der neuen Generation Börse fällt unter die Kategorie der Zocker. Sicher, der Großteil der jungen Wilden wird Anfängerfehler machen, aber man muss den Neulingen die Freiheit gewähren, auch schmerzhafte Erfahrungen zu machen. Wer mag von sich behaupten, bei seinen Investments stets fehlerlos gewesen zu sein? Auch maximale Routine an der Börse schützt nicht vor dramatischen Fehlgriffen – Stichwort Wirecard. Viel wichtiger ist es, daraus die richtigen Lehren zu ziehen. Der größte Lerneffekt tritt ein, wenn es um das eigene Geld geht.Nur auf diese Weise können aus Amateuren irgendwann erfahrene Investoren werden. Diese Trader bleiben langfristig. Die Zocker nicht. Sie werden sich verspekulieren und anschließend „den Markt“ dafür verantwortlich machen. Die Folge wird eine Art Selbstauslese sein, bei der am Ende deutlich mehr Aktionäre übrig bleiben als zuvor. Und das wird der deutschen Aktienkultur sehr guttun.

Review: Christian Berkel's Der Apfelbaum

Can a great actor also write great fiction?  In the case of Christian Berkel, famous for his movie and television roles, the answer is an emphatic yes.  To be sure, Berkel's 2019 book Der Apfelbaum is not strictly fiction, rather it is something of a mixed genre - an imaginatively enhanced-family memoir.  It is primarily the story of Berkel's mother - Ursula Nohl or "Sala" in the book. In describing the arc of Sala's life - and to some extent that of his father Otto - Berkel takes the reader on an odyssey beginning in the working class slums of post-WWI Berlin, to Madrid during the Spanish Civil War, to Nazi-occupied Paris, to a concentration camp in the French Pyrenees. to Buenos Aires, a Russian POW camp in Poland, and then back to Berlin.  In the process, Berkel conjures up for himself a fictitious sister, Ada. 

The novel begins with the author/narrator interrogating his mother about people and events in her past. He is in search of his own identity, but his mother, suffering from early-stage dementia, proves to be an unreliable source.  And so the narrator - relying on letters, interviews, and legal documents - fills in the gaps with his imaginative third-person narrative retelling of Sala's (and Otto's) story.  In his search for the truth Berkel writes the story not just of his family, but of the terrible course of modern German history. For Sala's journey across Europe and across the Atlantic to Argentina was not due to some thirst for adventure, but rather for survival.  Sala was a Jew - a Halbjüdin (half-Jew), she thought, since her father was Aryan while her mother a Volljüdin (fully Jewish) . But the Nazis made little distinction between Half and Full.  So she fled Berlin as a teenager to be with her mother, who, with her artist husband, was supportive of the anti-Franco anarchists. Unable to establish a relationship with her estranged mother, Sala then arrived in Paris just as German troops marched in.  Eventually Sala was rounded up by the Gendarmes in a sweep of non-French Jews and sent to Gurs concentration camp in southwestern France.  This, for me, was the most gripping section of Der Apfelbaum, for the narrator describes in some detail what daily life was like in the camp.  Gurs had an unusual mix of detainees: besides the Jews there were members of the anti-Franco International Brigade fighters as well as "undesirables" - prostitutes, homosexuals, indigent, "Gypsies", etc.  Eventually, the SS take control of the camp from the Vichy regime and begin deporting the Jewish detainees to the Auschwitz death camp.  Through luck and quick thinking Sala manages to elude the deportation and, through a series of harrowing events ends up in Leipzig, where she survives the end of the war and gives birth to Ada. 

In the middle of Der Apfelbaum the author/narrator muses about his drive to discover the truth about his family, his great need to remember the past.  All too often he encounters  this hostile attitude among his fellow Germans: "Irgendwann muss doch mal Schluss sein."  ("At some point you need to put this behind you.")

"Es geht um das Wagnis der Erinnerung für jenen unter uns. Wann diesder Vorgang als abgeschlossen gelten darf, mag jeder für sich entscheiden. Aber wollen wir die Erinnerung benutzen, um uns von etwas to befreien, das wir nicht getan haben, oder wollen wir mit ihr versuchen, das Bild unserer Identität zu schärfen, zu der auch die Vergangenheit des Zwangzigsten Jahrhunderts und des deutschen Völkermords an den europäischen Juden gehört?  Erst mit der Erinnerung gewinnt unser Leben ein Gesicht. {...} Ich will versuchen, die leeren Seiten zu füllen. Für mich. Für meine Kinder. "

With Der Apfelbaum, Christian Berkel has done a masterful job of "filling the empty pages" (die leeren Seiten zu füllen) of his family history not just for himself and his children, but for all of us.  I look forward to reading Berkel's sequel novel - Ada - which continues the story of his "sister",  just published this year.