Turkey's Borsa Istanbul up at open

By Gokhan Ergocun

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's stock exchange rose by 0.44 percent, or 453.17 points, to open at 102,611.06 points on Thursday.

On the fourth transaction day of the week, the banking and holding sector indices increased 1.32 percent and 0.33 percent, respectively.

Among all sector indices, the wood/paper/print sector index posted the best performance, up 1.94 percent, while the telecommunications sector index suffered the worst drop, down 0.69 percent.

On Wednesday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 closed at 102,157.88, up 0.61 percent, or 617.49 points, with a 6.8 billion Turkish lira ($1.54 billion) trade volume.

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate reached 4.4530 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Thursday, rising from 4.4180 at Wednesday's close.

The euro/lira exchange rate rose to 5.2580 by market open -- from 5.2160 at the previous close -- and one British pound traded for 6.0400 Turkish liras versus 5.9820 at the previous close.

The price of Brent oil reached $79.41 per barrel as of 6.00 p.m. local time (1500GMT) Thursday, up by more than 1.5 percent from $78.13 at the previous close. It was over $110 in the first half of 2014 and around $60 by the end of 2014. It was at its lowest level in the beginning of 2016, at $34.70.