Turkey's Borsa Istanbul up at Monday opening

By Fatih Erkan Dogan

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's benchmark index started Monday with a 0.3 percent advance to open at 88,765.78 points.

In the first transaction day of the week, the BIST 100 index rose by 268.45 points -- inching a little bit closer to important psychological barrier of 90.000 points -- where it hovered for some time but failed to decisively break.

The banking sector index went up 0.38 percent, while the holding sector index rose 0.47 percent.

Among all sectors, the sports sector index was the best performer -- up by 1.2 percent -- while the communication sector index started Monday with the biggest decline, falling 0.3 percent.

In Friday's closing session, the benchmark index declined 0.2 percent to 88,497.33 with a total trading volume of three billion Turkish liras (approximately $804 million).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate was 3.7200 at 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Monday, down 0.2 percent compared with 3.7310 at Friday's close.

Analysts believe global markets seemed calmed thanks to an absence of a negative outcome from a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart President Xi Jinping.

However, worries over the ongoing crisis in Syria which pitted Russia and the U.S. against each other plus increased tension on the Korean peninsula is still troubling markets.

A speech from Fed Chair Janet Yellen and the Sentix Investors’ Confidence Index from the European Union is expected to set the tone of markets on Monday.