Turkey's Borsa Istanbul up at open

By Gokhan Ergocun

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's stock exchange rose 0.33 percent, or 385.84 points, to open at 117,978.51 points on Thursday.

On the fourth transaction day of the week, the banking and holding sector indices rose 0.57 percent and 0.25 percent, respectively.

All sector indices gained value, with the leasing factoring sector index posting the best performance, up 0.76 percent.

On Wednesday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 closed at 117,592.67, down 0.57 percent, or 674.19 points, with a 6.49-billion-Turkish lira ($1.68 billion) trade volume.

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange stood at 3.8820 as of 09.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Thursday. It was 3.8860 at Wednesday's close.

The euro/lira exchange rate stood at 4.8050 on Thursday, compared to 4.8010 at the previous close.

The price of Brent oil rose over 1.6 percent to reach $64.94 per barrel as of 10.00 a.m. local time (0700GMT) Thursday, compared to $64.25 on Wednesday.

The number of unemployed persons age 15 and over fell 2.3 percentage points or 581,000 to reach 10.4 percent or 3.29 million people in December 2017, compared to December 2016, the Turkish Statistical Institute announced on Thursday.