Turkey's Borsa Istanbul opens day down

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's benchmark stock index started the day down 0.22 percent or 208.88 points to open at 93,295.87 points on Thursday.

The banking and holding sector indices fell 0.50 and 0.11 percent, respectively. The leasing factoring sector index showed the top performance at the open -- up 1.26 percent -- while the BIST banking index saw the worst opening.

The market will close early Thursday as it is the eve of the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday.

On Wednesday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 index fell 1.89 percent to 93,504.76 points with a trading volume of around 5.6 billion Turkish liras ($1.2 billion), hovering between 93,337.28 points and 95,608.54 points during the sessions.

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate stood at 4.6610 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT), compared with Wednesday's closing rate of 4.6450.

The euro/lira rate rose to 5.4990 on Thursday morning, up from 5.4790 at the previous close, while one British pound was traded for 6.2850 Turkish liras, versus 6.2090 at Wednesday's close.

The price of Brent oil was $76.42 per barrel as of 10 a.m. local time (0700GMT) Thursday, -- hovering between $76.35 and $76.78 during the day -- while it was around $66 at the beginning of this year.