DAX Down Marginally

(RTTNews) - German stocks are down in negative territory on Thursday with investors making cautious moves while looking ahead to Fed Chair Jerome Powell's speech at the Jackson Hole Symposium for clues about the central bank's likely move on rate cuts this year.

The symposium at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, gets underway later today.

Investors are also digesting the reports on Germany and Eurozone's manufacturing and services sector activity in the month of August.

The benchmark DAX, which advanced to 24,309.84 earlier in the session, was down 40.25 points or 0.17% at 24,236.85 a few minutes ago.

Beiersdorf is declining by about 2.2%. Deutsche Post, Symrise, Merck, Deutsche Boerse, Heidelberg Materials, Sartorius, Vonovia and Deutsche Telekom are down 1 to 1.5%.

Rheinmetall is rising nearly 3.5%. Siemens Energy is gaining about 1.5%, while RWE, MTU Aero Engine and Deutsche Bank are up with modest gains.

In economic news, Germany's private sector grew the most in five months in August driven by the upturn in manufacturing output, purchasing managers' survey data from S&P Global showed.

The flash HCOB composite output index posted 50.9 in August, up from 50.6 in July. Thie rise was above forecast of 50.2.

The manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index climbed to a 38-month high of 49.9 from 49.1, while it was expected to fall to 48.8.

Meanwhile, the services PMI dropped more-than-expected to 50.1 from 50.6 in July. The reading was seen at 50.3.

The HCOB Eurozone Composite PMI rose to 51.1 in August from 50.9 in the previous month, beating market expectations of a slowdown to 50.7 to mark the sharpest pace of expansion in the bloc's private sector output since May of the previous year, according to a flash estimate.

The services sector PMI reading came in with a score of 50.7 for August, down from 51.0 a month earlier, while the manufacturing PMI reading for August came in at 50.5, up from 49.8 in July.