BERLIN, April 3 (Xinhua) -- German stocks were off to a shaky start on Friday, with the benchmark DAX index losing 35.55 points, or 0.37 percent, opening at 9,535.27 points.
German DAX shares temporary hit a new seven-day low and were more than 30 percent below the all-time-high. Over the last seven days, the DAX index fell by 4.3 percent.
The biggest winner among Germany's largest 30 companies at the start of trading was aircraft engine specialist MTU Aero, increasing 0.93 percent, followed by Germany's biggest airline Lufthansa with 0.68 percent and car manufacturer Daimler with 0.64 percent.
Shares of Munich Re fell by 1.87 percent. The leading global provider of reinsurance was the biggest loser at the start of trading on Friday.
On Friday, the Mechanical Engineering Industry Association (VDMA) announced that order intake of German machine manufactures declined by 4 percent in February year-on-year. While orders from domestic customers fell by 6 percent, international orders were down 3 percent.
"The real extent of the consequences of the corona pandemic in the mechanical engineering sector will only become apparent in the order figures for March and the following months", commented VDMA chief economist Ralph Wiechers and warned that "this is the calm before the storm."
The yield on German ten-year bonds went down by 0.012 percentage points to minus 0.448 percent and the euro was trading almost unchanged at 1.0857 U.S. dollars, increasing slightly by 0.01 percent on Friday morning.
