The DAX started trading on Thursday with little change ahead of the long Easter weekend.

The leading German index stood at 18,472 points, within reach of the record high of 18,511.17 points reached on Wednesday. The prospect of falling interest rates in the USA and the eurozone in the long term has been driving share prices up for weeks. "So far, nothing has been able to dampen the euphoric mood," said portfolio manager Thomas Altmann from asset manager QC Partners. At the moment, it seems as if this party will go on forever.

Among the biggest winners in the DAX were the shares of Rheinmetall and Sartorius, which gained 1.5 and a good one percent respectively. On the losing side were the shares of DHL Group following a downgrade by Deutsche Bank. The analysts downgraded the shares to "hold" from "buy". DHL shares were down 1.7 percent. In the SDax, Energiekontor slipped by around ten percent. After a record year, the wind and solar power plant developer expects project delays due to delivery delays and material bottlenecks.

(Report by: Daniela Pegna, edited by Christian Götz. If you have any queries, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets).)