BERLIN, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- German stocks continued their week's horizontal trend and were almost unchanged at the start of trading on Thursday, with the benchmark DAX index losing 11.37 points, or 0.09 percent, opening at 12,082.89 points.
The biggest winner among Germany's largest 30 companies at the start of trading was car manufacturer Volkswagen, increasing 1.04 percent, followed by consumer goods company Henkel with 0.19 percent.
U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs has included Volkswagen shares in the bank's valuation again with a "buy" rating and a price target of 193 euros (212.7 U.S. dollars). Volkswagen shares were trading at 152.6 euros (168.2 U.S. dollars) on Thursday morning local time.
Shares of Bayer fell by 1.26 percent. The German agrochemical giant was the biggest loser at the start of trading on Thursday.
Since Bayer bought U.S. rival Monsanto in the biggest takeover in German corporate history in 2018, shares of Bayer have lost around 50 percent but recovered some of their losses after hitting a five-year low in June.
The euro increased by 0.29 percent on Thursday morning local time, trading at 1.1006 U.S. dollars.
The German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) published the figures for Germany's exporting business in August. Exports of German companies declined month-on-month by 1.8 percent to 101.2 billion euros (111.5 billion U.S. dollars) while imports increased 0.5 percent to 85.0 billion euros (93.7 billion U.S. dollars) in the same period.
