Turkey's Borsa Istanbul down at open

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's benchmark stock index started the midweek trading day down 0.15 percent or 140.85 points to open at 94,296.01 points on Wednesday.

The banking and holding sector indices fell 0.36 and 0.34 percent, respectively. The textile leather sector index showed the top performance at the open -- up 0.93 percent -- while the BIST banking index saw the worst opening.

On Tuesday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 index rose 1.50 percent to 94,436.87 points with a trading volume of 6.4 billion Turkish liras ($1.3 billion), hovering between 92,288.59 points and 94,743.17 points during the sessions.

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate stood at 4.7530 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT), compared with Tuesday's closing rate of 4.7500.

The euro/lira rate rose to 5.5070 on Wednesday morning, versus 5.4970 at the previous close, while one British pound was traded for 6.2710 Turkish liras, up from 6.2630 at Tuesday's close.

The price of Brent oil was $75.48 per barrel as of 10:15 a.m. local time (0715GMT) Wednesday, -- hovering between $74.90 and $75.50 during the day -- while it was around $66 at the beginning of this year.