BIST 100 starts last week of year on rise

By Gokhan Ergocun

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's stock exchange started the last week of the year up 0.55 percent to open at 111,705.21 points.

On Monday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 rose 605.74 points while the banking and holding sectors rose 0.88 and 0.38 percent, respectively.

Among all sector indices, the mining sector index was the best performer, rising 1.43 percent, while the sports sector index saw the biggest decline, falling 0.81 percent.

On Friday the BIST 100 was down 0.16 percent or 172.49 points to close at 111,099.47 points, with a 5.2 billion Turkish lira ($1.36 billion) trading volume.

The U.S. dollar-Turkish lira rate dropped slightly to 3.8120 at 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT), compared with Friday's closing rate of 3.8180.

The euro-lira rate stood at 4.5260 from last week’s close at 4.5290.

The Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) is due to release the sectoral confidence index on Tuesday, the economic confidence index on Thursday, and foreign trade statistics on Friday, while the Central Bank will release the house price index on Thursday.

Public enterprises on Friday will also release the number of foreign nationals and citizens arriving and leaving the country, monthly money and banking statistics, public net debt stock statistics, Turkey's external debt statistics, and general government debt stock statistics, the last as defined by the European Union.