Borsa Istanbul down at Thursday's close

By Gokhan Ergocun

ISTANBUL (AA) – The Turkish benchmark stock index ended at 7,491.94 points on Thursday, down by 1.45% from the previous close.

Starting the day at 7,648.30 points, the index hovered between 7,476.31 and 7,872.81, and lost 110.3 points versus Wednesday's close.

The trading saw 57 indexes gaining value, while 41 lost.

The daily transaction volume reached 59.77 billion Turkish liras ($2.2 billion), while the overall value of the index was 6.36 trillion Turkish liras ($234.9 billion).

While the USD/TRY exchange rate was around 27.2 level at the beginning of Thursday, it dropped to 25.75 as of 5.50 p.m. local time (1450GMT) after the country's Central Bank hiked its policy rate by 750 basis points to 25%.

The price of an ounce of gold was $1,949.65, while Brent crude oil sold for $82.80 per barrel.