The German stock index (Dax) saw its losses deepen on Friday afternoon, following a subdued start to trading. By approximately 12:30 pm, the leading index was calculated at around 24,754 points, marking a decrease of 0.6 percent compared to the previous day’s closing level.
Among the strongest performing stocks were shares of Deutsche Telekom, Eon, and Rheinmetall. Conversely, Hochtief, Siemens, and Infineon lagged, forming the bottom of the performance list. The declining performance of semiconductor manufacturer shares is attributed to rising skepticism regarding the promises of “Artificial Intelligence.” Following a sharp decline in the Nasdaq on Thursday, the industry-which had recently capitalized on the hype surrounding Large Language Models (LLMs)-must now meet high expectations to convince investors.
In other markets, the European common currency experienced some weakness on Friday afternoon, with the euro trading at $1.1433 against the US dollar.
Meanwhile, the gold price rose profitably, reaching $3,997 per fine ounce in the afternoon, an increase of 0.5 percent. This translates to a price of 112.40 euros per gram. Oil prices, however, increased significantly. At around 12:00 pm German time on Friday afternoon, a barrel of Brent Crude from the North Sea cost $85.94, which represented a 2.0 percent increase over the close of the previous trading day.
