Borsa Istanbul flat at open

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's benchmark index started the day with a 67.56-point increase to open at 90,881.17 on Wednesday.

During the third transactions of the week, the BIST 100 index was up by 0.07 percent.

The banking and holding sector indexes rose by 0.15 percent and 0.16 percent, respectively.

Among all sectors, the leasing and factoring sector index was the best performer -- up 2.32 percent -- while the sports index started Wednesday with a decline, falling 0.85 percent.

At Tuesday's closing session, the benchmark index was down 231.38 points or 0.25 percent with a total trading volume of 4 billion Turkish liras (approximately $1.09 billion), after hitting a 25-month high of 91,044.99 points at Monday's close.

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate slightly decreased to 3.6740 at 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Wednesday, compared with 3.6760 at Tuesday's close.