Turkey's Borsa Istanbul starts day up

By Aysu Bicer

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's benchmark stock index started Wednesday at 119,693.80 points, up 0.30%, or 354.95 points.

At Tuesday's close, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 index was up 0.72% at 119,338.85 points with a record daily trading volume of 35.06 billion Turkish liras ($5.1 billion).

The US dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate dropped slightly to 6.8650 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) Wednesday, compared to 6.8670 at the previous close.

The euro/Turkish lira exchange rate also decreased to 7.7380 from 7.7550 and one British pound traded for 8.6173 Turkish liras, down from 8.6960 at the Tuesday's close.

One barrel of Brent crude oil sold for around $42.81 as of 10 a.m. local time (0700GMT) on Wednesday.