Turkey's benchmark stock index down at open

By Jeyhun Aliyev

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's stock exchange fell by 0.33 percent, or 320.02 points, to open at 95,290.46 points on Monday.

On the first transaction day of the week, the banking sector index went down 0.43 percent and holding sector index dropped 0.37 percent.

Among all sector indices, the textile leather sector index showed the best performance, up 1.01 percent, and the wholesale and retail trade sector index saw the highest drop, losing 0.67 percent.

On Friday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 closed at 95,610.48, up 1.13 percent, or 1,067.21 points, with a trade volume of 7.9 billion Turkish liras ($1.55 billion).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rose to 5.1090 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Monday, from 5.0840 at Friday's close.

The euro/lira exchange rate also climbed to 5.9040 by market open -- from 5.8920 at the previous close -- and one British pound traded for 6.6540 Turkish liras versus 6.6180 at the previous close.

The price of Brent oil rose slightly to $73.43 per barrel as of 10 a.m. local time (0700GMT) Monday, compared to $73.35 on Friday.