Turkey's Borsa Istanbul down at open

By Tuba Sahin

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's stock exchange declined 0.22 percent, or 219.28 points, to open at 95,942.24 points on Tuesday.

The BIST banking and holding sector indexes started the day down 0.32 percent and 0.24 percent, respectively. The information technologies sector index rose the most -- up 0.91 percent -- while the basic metal index showed the worst fall -- down 0.53 percent.

On Monday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 index closed at 96,157.74, up 0.60 percent, with a trade volume of 7.4 billion Turkish liras (nearly $1.51 billion).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate rose to 4.9080 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Tuesday. It was 4.8850 at Monday's close.

The euro/lira exchange rate climbed to 5.7430, compared to Monday's close of 5.7200 while one British pound traded for 6.4370 liras versus 6.4290 at the previous close.

The price of Brent oil was $75.31 per barrel as of 10 a.m. local time (0700GMT) Tuesday, down from 75.55 at the previous close.

Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) announced that Turkey's exports in June totaled nearly $13 billion while foreign trade deficit slipped 9.1 percent, year-on-year.

It also revealed that the country's tourism revenue reached $7B in second quarter of 2018, up 30.1 percent compared to the same quarter last year.