Turkey's Borsa Istanbul down at opening

By Dilara Zengin

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's benchmark index started the day with a 246.40-point decrease to open at 95,915.10 points on Wednesday.

On the third transaction day of the week, the BIST 100 index declined 0.26 percent.

The banking and holding sector indices dropped by 0.46 percent and 0.24 percent respectively.

Among all sectors, the tourism sector index was the best performer with a 0.74-percent rise while the leasing and factoring sector index started the day with the biggest decline, falling by 0.55 percent.

At close on Tuesday, the BIST 100 was up 573.76 points or 0.60 percent to reach 96,161.50 points, with a total trading volume of 5.3 billion Turkish liras (approximately $1.5 billion).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate fell to 3.5440 at 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) Wednesday, compared with 3.5520 at Tuesday’s close.