BERLIN, Dec. 2 (Xinhua) -- German stocks were off to a shaky start on Wednesday, with the benchmark DAX index losing 40.39 points, or 0.30 percent, opening at 13,341.91 points.

The biggest winner among Germany's 30 largest listed companies at the start of trading was housing company Deutsche Wohnen, increasing by 0.54 percent, followed by software company SAP with 0.51 percent and building materials company HeidelbergCement with 0.36 percent.

On Tuesday, U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley has left the rating for HeidelbergCement at "Overweight" with a price target of 70 euros (about 84 U.S. dollars). The building materials company was trading at around 61 euros (roughly 73 dollars) per share at the start of trading on Wednesday.

Shares of Volkswagen fell by 1.26 percent. The German carmaker was the biggest loser at the start of trading on Wednesday.

German media reported that Volkswagen's board refused to decide on an early contract extension of its CEO Herbert Diess. According to reports, Diess insisted on the early extension in advance of the board meeting as a vote of confidence.

Turnover of retail companies in Germany in October increased by 2.6 percent from the previous month and was even up 9.4 percent compared to the same month last year, Germany's Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) announced on Wednesday.

German wholesale companies saw turnover decline in September by 0.3 percent compared to the previous month, according to Destatis. Total turnover in the wholesale sector in the third quarter of 2020 was down 1.1 percent year-on-year.

The yield on German ten-year bonds went down 0.005 percentage point to minus 0.527 percent, and the euro was trading unchanged at 1.2072 U.S. dollars on Wednesday morning.