Turkey's Borsa Istanbul flat at open

By Gokhan Ergocun

ISTANBUL (AA) - Turkey's stock exchange climbed 0.03 percent, or 28.41 points, to open at 95,521.71 points Thursday.

On the fourth transaction day of the week, the banking and holding sector indices rose 0.36 percent and 0.46 percent, respectively.

Among all sector indices, the tourism sector index posted the best performance, up 1.07 percent, while the chemical petrol plastic sector index was the worst, down 1.98 percent.

On Wednesday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 closed at 95,493.30, up 0.81 percent or 765.63 points, with a trade volume of 7.3 billion Turkish liras ($1.35 billion).

The USD/TRY exchange rate increased slightly to 5.3760 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Thursday. It was 5.3650 at Wednesday's close.

The euro/lira exchange dropped to 6.1540 by market open -- from 6.1630 at the previous close -- and one British pound traded for 7.0840 Turkish liras over 7.0630 at the previous close.

The price of Brent oil dropped to $72.22 per barrel as of 10.00 a.m. local time (0700GMT) Thursday. It was $72.59 on Wednesday.