After jumping back over the 14,000 point mark, the Dax increased its price gains a little on Thursday. The US stock market, which was strong the day before, supported the listings. In the first hour of trading, the leading German index was 0.31 percent higher at 14,140 points.

The MDax of medium-sized stocks rose in early trading by 0.31 percent to 25,566 points. The Eurozone leading index EuroStoxx 50 gained 0.3 percent.

Major US indices had continued their recovery the previous day and Asian markets followed in the morning. An eight-month high in US consumer confidence drove stock prices, Credit Suisse said. At the same time, consumers' inflation expectations have fallen sharply.

It is currently looking like a Christmas rally on Wall Street, which is defined as a strong stock market phase during the last five trading days in December and the first two trading days in January, wrote analyst Tina Teng from broker CMC Markets.

The stocks of the fuel cell manufacturer SFC Energy, which was included in the SDax small-cap index on December 27, were up 1.7 percent. For this, the supplier and gas importer Uniper has to leave the index after it has been rescued by the state. Uniper shares fell 1.4 percent on Thursday.

Rheinmetall continued its price recovery after Tuesday's setback with an increase of 2.9 percent. The armaments company wants to work with Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) to repair the defective Puma infantry fighting vehicle in the next two to three weeks. On Tuesday, the problems with the tank weighed heavily on the Rheinmetall price, and the price losses have long since been ironed out.

A pessimistic forecast by US memory chip manufacturer Micron Technology did not dampen market sentiment. According to Micron, the industry's largest oversupply in more than a decade is likely to make it more difficult to return to profitability in 2023. On the German stock market, industry stocks such as Infineon or Aixtron have so far hardly reacted to this news.