Turkey's benchmark stock index flat at open

By Jeyhun Aliyev

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's stock exchange started the midweek trading day up 0.03 percent, or 24.73 points, to open at 94,432.93 points on Wednesday.

The banking sector indices declined 0.09 percent while holding sector indices rose 0.06 percent.

Among all sector indices, the tourism sector index showed the best performance at the open, up 0.69 percent, while the telecommunication sector index performed the worst, down 0.73 percent.

On Tuesday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 closed at 94,408.19, up 0.43 percent, or 399.90 points, with a 6.1-billion-Turkish lira ($1.3 billion) trade volume.

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate decreased to 4.6310 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT), compared with Tuesday's closing rate of 4.6420.

The euro/lira exchange rate dropped to 5.4050 on Wednesday morning, versus 5.4110 at the previous close, while one British pound was traded for 6.1380 Turkish liras, down from 6.1585 at Tuesday's close.

The price of Brent oil was $76.67 per barrel as of 10.00 a.m. local time (0700GMT) Wednesday, compared to $75.54 on Tuesday's closing, while it was around $66 at the beginning of this year.