Turkey's Borsa Istanbul flat at open

By Gokhan Ergocun

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's stock exchange rose slighlty by 0.04 percent, or 38,46 points, to open at 94,590.32 points on Thursday.

On the fourth transaction day of the week, the banking and holding sector indices lost 0.37 percent and 0.07 percent, respectively.

Among all sector indices, the wholesale and retail trade sector index posted the best performance, up 2.09 percent, while the food beverage sector index suffered a decline, down 0.46 percent.

On Wednesday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 closed at 94,551.86, up 0.12 percent, or 114.99 points, with a trade volume of 5.9 billion Turkish liras ($1.2 billion).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate rose to 4.7620 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Thursday, from 4.7420 at Wednesday's close. Last month it hit an all-time high of 4.93.

The euro/lira exchange rate also increased to 5.5080 by market open -- from 5.4910 at the previous close -- while one British pound traded for 6.2740 Turkish liras versus 6.2680 at the previous close.

The price of Brent oil dropped to $74.09 per barrel as of 10.00 a.m. local time (0700GMT) Thursday, from $75.09 at the previous close.