DAX Treads Water Ahead Of Yellen Speech

(RTTNews) - German shares inched lower on Friday, as falling oil prices and lackluster industrial profits data from China served to induce a little bit of caution following a recent run-up in prices.

Amid little economic data or corporate news, traders await U.S. GDP data and comments from Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen later in the day to see if an interest-rate increase is still in play for June's policy meeting.

The benchmark DAX was down 23 points or 0.22 percent at 10,250 in late opening deals after rising about 0.7 percent in the previous session.

Commerzbank shed 0.8 percent and Deutsche Bank slid half a percent, a day after Spanish lender Banco Popular surprised investors with a plan to issue 2 billion new shares at a substantial discount to the market price.

Automakers also retreated across the board, with BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen declining between 0.6 percent and 1.4 percent.

Fresenius Medical Care, Infineon Technologies, Merck KGaA, SAP and Siemens were among those bucking the downtrend.