Turkey's Borsa Istanbul goes up at close

By Can Erozden

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's benchmark stock index closed the day up 1.38 percent to reach 107,921.34 points on Friday, with a 6.2-billion-Turkish lira ($1.61 billion) trading volume.

Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 index rose 1,473.81 points from Thursday's close at 105,303.94 points.

The banking and holding sector indices increased by 2.60 and 1.19 percent, respectively.

Among all sector indices, the banking sector index was the best performer whilst stock exchange investment trusts sector index has seen the biggest fall with 1.33 percent.

Ihlas Holding was the top gainer on Friday as its shares rose by 8.33 percent. Stocks of Global Yatirim Holding suffered the biggest drop of the day, going down 1.58 percent.

Friday's top shares with highest trade volume in the BIST 100 were national flag carrier Turkish Airlines, lender Halkbank, defense company Aselsan and other lenders Akbank and Garanti.

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate went down to 3,8300 as of 5 p.m. local time (1400GMT) Friday, down from 3.8700 at Thursday's close.

One euro traded for 4.5050 liras by local market close, showing a decrease compared with Thursday's closing EUR/TRY exchange rate at 4.5660.

The BIST Gold Exchange index closed day 0.63 percent down, while the price of gold per kilogram was 154,500 Turkish liras ($40,242) as of 4.30 p.m. local time (1330GMT), down from previous closing price of 156,427 Turkish liras ($40,503).

The price of Brent oil went up to $62.89 per barrel as of 6.15 p.m. local time (1515GMT) Friday, compared with Thursday's close at $61.86.