Turkey's Borsa Istanbul up at close

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey’s benchmark index closed the day up 424.91 points to reach 89,037.45 points Wednesday.

The BIST 100 index was up 0.48 percent with a total trading volume of 3.6 billion Turkish liras (approximately $974.8 million).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate rose to 3.6960 liras as of 5 p.m. (1400GMT) Wednesday, compared with 3.6620 liras at Tuesday's close.

The dollar traded for 3.6410 liras last Friday, March 31, after seeing a historic hike -- around 3.94 liras -- in mid-January.

The Borsa Istanbul Gold Exchange index was down 0.95 percent while the price of gold per kilogram climbed to 148,178 Turkish liras (some $40,124) as of 4.30 p.m. (1330GMT), up from 148,000 Turkish liras (some $40,355) at Tuesday's close.

On the third trading day of the week, the banking and holding sector indices rose 1.11 and 1.67 percent, respectively.

Among all sectors, the wood paper printing index was the best performer of the day, with an increase of 2.18 percent, while the basic metal sector was the worst, falling 5.01 percent.

Stocks of tube and pipe producer ERBOSAN Erciyas Tube (ERBOS) were the top gainer of Wednesday -- up 8.82 percent -- while one of Turkey's leading defense industry companies, Otokar (OTKAR), saw the largest decline of the day, falling 1.71 percent.

The five most-traded stocks were lenders Garanti, Halkbank, Akbank, Turkey's leading petrochemicals producer Petkim, and lender Is Bankasi.