Turkey's Borsa Istanbul down in opening session

By Gokhan Ergocun

ISTANBUL (AA) - Turkey's stock exchange dropped 0.19 percent, or 178 points, to open at 92,530.56 points Wednesday.

On the third transaction day of the week, the banking and holding sector indices fell 0.27 percent and 0.58 percent, respectively.

Among all sector indices, the leasing factoring sector index posted the best performance, up 0.58 percent, while the wholesale and retail trade sector was the worst, down 0.62 percent.

On Tuesday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 closed at 92,708.56, up 1.38 percent or 1,263.28 points, with a trading volume of 6.4 billion Turkish liras ($1.16 billion).

The USD/TRY exchange rate dropped to 5.4890 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Wednesday. It was 5.5000 at Tuesday's close.

The euro/lira exchange rate stood at 6.2020 by market open -- compared to 6.2020 at the previous close -- and one British pound traded for 7.1500 Turkish liras over 7.1330 at the previous close.

The price of Brent oil dropped to $65.35 per barrel as of 10.00 a.m. local time (0700GMT) Wednesday. It was $67.88 on Tuesday.