Inside Wirtschaft - Der Podcast mit Manuel Koch | Börse und Wirtschaft im Blick · Manuel Koch

#1484 Inside Wirtschaft - Mr. Dax Dirk Müller (Cashkurs): „Wir knallen gegen die Leitplanken - ETF-Schneeballsystem"

March 3, 2026·36 min·2 clips

Müller refuses to invest in defense stocks on ethical grounds: he says no investor can honestly claim they don't secretly feel relieved when a conflict escalates and their armaments position rises.

1. Inside Wirtschaft host Manuel Koch interviews Dirk Müller, known as 'Mr. Dax,' a German stock market commentator and founder of Cashkurs, for a financial market update. 2. Dirk Müller has followed stock markets for 35 years and runs the Cashkurs Trendinvest active stock-picking service alongside an offensive fund. 3. The episode's core thesis is that passive ETF investing has distorted capital markets and that AI disruption is creating hidden but accelerating credit stress. 4. Müller argues that crises are normal at stock markets — the 35-year picture shows only brief quiet patches — and that media amplification makes each crisis feel uniquely severe. 5. On geopolitics, he identifies a potential military conflict in Central Europe as the most important macro risk, calling it more significant than any German domestic political change. 6. Müller dismisses German party politics — including the AfD firewall debate — as irrelevant to stock market outcomes, calling ideological thinking the core obstacle to effective policy across all parties. 7. He describes a capital-flight pattern among wealthy German investors: the question in his circles is no longer 'are you leaving Germany?' but 'where are you going?' 8. He attributes Germany's competitive decline to ideology overriding pragmatic decision-making, contrasting it with the Swiss system of cross-party coalition decisions based on practical outcomes. 9. On ETFs: Müller calls the current passive-investing majority a snowball system — money mechanically flows into the most-weighted index stocks regardless of valuation, while cheap high-quality European mid-caps receive no capital. 10. He warns the ETF snowball system works in reverse when money is withdrawn, potentially causing an intensified downward spiral in overweighted stocks. 11. Müller singles out European industrial and healthcare companies as currently very cheap, ignored by index money, and potentially attractive for investors willing to do individual stock analysis. 12. He refuses on ethical grounds to invest in armaments companies, arguing no investor can honestly suppress the psychological reflex of benefiting from geopolitical escalation. 13. He proposes that the state — rather than private investors — should be the sole shareholder in armaments companies. 14. On AI disruption, Müller warns that the pace of technological change is eliminating business models faster than companies can adapt, and that credit markets are amplifying this through withdrawal of loans. 15. He compares current private-credit market stress — involving a $2.5 trillion market with some large funds closing redemptions — cautiously to the 2007-2008 crisis, noting it is not identical but has structural similarities. 16. His 26-year gold and silver recommendation: buy physically, hold indefinitely as financial insurance, never treat it as a speculation vehicle, buy in small regular increments. 17. He argues silver is undervalued relative to gold (historical ratio of 1:15-1:20 versus current 1:100) and benefits from rising industrial demand in AI hardware, photovoltaics, and electrification. 18. On Bitcoin: Müller acknowledges it has earned a place in financial portfolios but does not personally focus on it, preferring stocks and precious metals where he has more analytical depth. 19. The episode format is a direct two-person interview with no audience questions; Müller's tone is direct and often rhetorically pointed, using analogies like the 'lemon' and the 'snowball.' 20. Best suited to German retail investors and people interested in European financial markets; less useful for those seeking US-centric or highly technical quantitative analysis.

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