Turkey's Borsa Istanbul down at close

By Dilara Zengin

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey’s benchmark index closed the day down 175.79 points Thursday to stand at 97,365.79 points.

Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 index fell by 0.18 percent with a total trading volume of 5 billion Turkish liras (approximately $1.4 billion).

On the fourth transaction day of the week, the banking and the holding sector indexes went down 0.40 percent and 0.31 percent, respectively.

The leasing and factoring sector index was the best performer, up 2.2 percent, while the sports sector index was the worst, down 1.57 percent.

Stocks of Sasa Polyester Sanayi performed the best on Thursday -- up 5.5 percent -- while Netas, a telecommunications company, saw the largest decline of the day, falling 5.06 percent.

The five most traded stocks were private lender Garanti, Turkish defense giant Aselsan, national flag carrier Turkish Airlines, major cement producer Afyon Cimento and state lender Halkbank.

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate increased to 3.5410 Turkish liras as of 6 p.m. (1500GMT) on Thursday, up from 3.5390 Turkish liras at Wednesday's close.

Borsa Istanbul's Gold Exchange index rose by 0.17 percent, while the price of gold per kilogram rose to 143,750 Turkish liras (around $40,608) as of 4.30 p.m. (1330GMT).