Turkey's Borsa Istanbul flat at opening

By Tuba Sahin

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's benchmark stock index started the day with a 132.98-point or 0.12 percent increase to open at 108,727.43 points on Wednesday.

The banking and holding sector indices rose by 0.15 and 0.18 percent, respectively.

Among all sectors, the mining sector index was the best performer with a 1.07-percent rise, while the leasing, factoring sector started the day with the biggest decline, falling by 0.88 percent.

On Tuesday's close, the BIST 100 was down 20.42 points or 0.02 percent to reach 108,594.45 points, with a total trading volume of 5.9 billion Turkish liras (nearly $1.68 billion).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate was flat at 3.4980 at 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) Wednesday, compared with 3.4970 at Tuesday’s close.

Meanwhile, Turkey's consumer confidence index saw a 0.3 percent decline month-on-month to 71.1 in August, according to data revealed by Turkish Statistical Institute on Wednesday.