Turkey’s benchmark index goes down at close

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey’s benchmark index closed with a 496.10-point drop to around 88,000 Tuesday.

The BIST 100 index fell by 0.56 percent to 88,082.21 while the total trading volume was 5.6 billion Turkish liras (approximately $1.53 billion).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate continued to decrease and stood at 3.6490 as of 5 p.m. (1400GMT) Tuesday, compared with 3.6790 at Monday's closing session.

On the second day of the week, the banking and holding sector indices decreased by 0.42 and 0.58 percent, respectively. Among all sectors, the sport index was the best performer --1.57 percent rise-- while the food beverage sector dropped the most, declining by 1.90 percent.

The most heavily-traded stocks were lenders Halkbank and Garanti, the country's national flag carrier Turkish Airlines, followed by other private lenders Akbank and Yapi Kredi.

Shares of Metro, a conglomerate that has businesses in several sectors, including tourism and transportation, were the top gainers of the day, rising 3.42 percent.

Halkbank, a state lender that was recently transferred to the country's newly-founded sovereign wealth fund, suffered the biggest drop of the day, falling by 6.06 percent.

The Borsa Istanbul Gold Exchange index increased by 0.13 percent while gold was trading at 144,200 Turkish liras (around $39,525) per kilogram as of 4.30 p.m. (1330GMT).

On Tuesday, Turkish Central Bank said Turkey’s current account deficit was at $4.27 billion in December 2016, down $784 million compared with the same month in 2015.

The figure was largely in line with forecasts as a panel of 15 experts questioned by Anadolu Agency predicted an average of $4.3 billion current account deficit for December 2016.

In December 2016, the foreign trade balance contributed positively to the current account deficit, as the trade deficit fell by $834 million to $4.2 billion.

Analysts said investors would follow U.S. Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen's remarks on the next trading day.