BERLIN, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- German shares were almost unchanged at the start of trading on Friday with the benchmark DAX index losing 8.06 points, or 0.05 percent, opening at 15,242.8 points.
The biggest winner among Germany's 40 largest listed companies was carmaker Daimler, increasing by 2.78 percent, followed by automotive supplier Continental with 1.59 percent and plastic specialist Covestro with 0.81 percent.
Shares of Sartorius fell by 1.21 percent. The German pharmaceutical and laboratory equipment supplier was the biggest loser at the start of trading on Friday.
Over the course of the week, the blue-chip index DAX successfully reclaimed the 15,000-point benchmark. German shares recovered by about 200 points or 1.3 percent after the heavy losses on Monday.
German exports in August were up 14.4 percent year-on-year, amounting to 104.4 billion euros (about 120.6 billion U.S. dollars), the country's Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) announced on Friday. Imports even grew by 18.1 percent and reached 93.8 billion euros (about 108.47 billion dollars).
Turnover in Germany's main construction industry in July increased by 4.9 percent year-on-year while the number of employees in this sector grew by 1.4 percent, Destatis also announced.
The yield on German ten-year bonds increased 0.0325 percentage points to minus 0.1575 percent and the euro was trading almost unchanged at 1.1556 dollars, decreasing by 0.01 percent on Friday morning. Enditem