Turkey's Borsa Istanbul starts week up

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's benchmark stock index started the week up 0.43 percent to open at 115,639.18 points on Monday.

Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 index rose 492.12 points, up from Friday's close at 115,147.06 points. Last week, the BIST 100 showed a 0.4 percent hike on a weekly basis.

The index has fallen 2 percent since the beginning of the year -- after hitting its highest close ever at 117,524.20 points on Jan. 2.

On Monday morning, the banking and holding sector indices went up 0.88 percent and 0.32 percent, respectively.

Among all sectors, the BIST transportation index increased the most -- up 0.98 percent -- while the BIST leasing factoring index suffered the biggest fall, going down 0.56 percent.

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate stood at 3.8180 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT), compared with Friday's closing rate of 3.8020.

The euro/lira rate also increased slightly to 4.6690 on Monday morning, up from 4.6520 at the previous close.

The price of Brent oil was $68.73 per barrel as of 10 a.m. local time (0700GMT) Monday, versus $68.90 at Friday's close.