UPDATE - Turkey's Borsa Istanbul up at midweek close

UPDATES WITH MORE DAILY FIGURES

By Aysu Bicer

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's benchmark stock index ended Wednesday at 1,564.94 points, up 1.02%.

After starting the day at 1,551.30 points, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 index rose 15.78 points from 1,549.15 points at Tuesday's close.

During the day, the index hovered between 1,551.30 and 1,564.25 points – 71 stocks on the index rose, 23 fell, and the remaining were flat compared to the previous close.

The total market value of the BIST 100 was around 1.1 trillion Turkish liras ($155 billion) by market close, with a daily trading volume of 26.4 billion Turkish liras (nearly $3.5 billion).

Stocks of polyester producer Sasa climbed the most, up 9.99%, while the sharpest drop of 3.06% was seen in shares of real estate investment trusts firm Alarko Gmyo.

The highest trading volumes were posted by private lender Garanti, Sasa and chemical giant Petkim.

The price of one ounce of gold was $1,712.50 by market close, up from $1,696.00 at the previous close, according to data from Borsa Istanbul's Precious Metals and Diamond Markets.

The price of Brent crude oil was around $68.07 per barrel as of 6.15 p.m. local time (1515GMT) on Wednesday.