Turkey's Borsa Istanbul up at open

By Tuba Sahin

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's benchmark index started Thursday with a 279.47-point increase to stand at 96,473.66 points.

On the fourth transaction day of the week, the BIST 100 index rose by 0.29 percent.

The banking sector increased by 0.42 percent while the holding sector index went up by 0.48 percent.

Among all sectors, the wood, paper, printing sector index was the best performer with a 0.86-percent rise while the SME industrial index started the day with the biggest decline, falling by 0.37 percent.

The BIST 100 was up 870.82 points or 0.91 percent to reach its historical highest level of 96,194.20 points, with a total trading volume of 6.3 billion Turkish liras (around $1.75 billion) at close on Wednesday.

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate slightly decreased to 3.5840 at 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Thursday, compared with 3.5900 at Wednesday’s close.