Turkey's Borsa Istanbul down at opening

By Dilara Zengin

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's benchmark index, BIST 100, fell 456.99 points, or 0.51 percent on Thursday to open at 88,580.47.

The banking and holding sector indices went down 0.48 percent and 0.84 percent, respectively.

Among all sectors, the leasing and factoring sector index was the best performer -- up 0.10 percent -- while the communication index had the biggest decline, falling 1.16 percent.

In Thursday's closing session, the benchmark index was up 424.91 points or 0.48 percent to 89,037.45 with a total trading volume of 3.4 billion Turkish liras (approximately $974.8 million).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate rose to 3.7200 at 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Thursday, compared with 3.6960 at Wednesday's close.

Meanwhile, analysts said investors would follow the European Central Bank's accounts of its last monetary policy meeting which is set to be released on Thursday.

They will also focus on the meeting between the U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trade ties are expected to be discussed at the meeting in a bid to restrain North Korea who ambitiously seeks to develop nuclear arms.