Turkey's Borsa Istanbul up at open

By Jeyhun Aliyev

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's stock exchange rose 0.62 percent, or 600.21 points, to open at 96,827.20 points on Friday.

On the last transaction day of the week, the BIST banking and holding sector indices rose 0.85 percent and 0.68 percent, respectively.

Among all sector indices, the construction index performed the best, up 1.13 percent, while the wholesale and retail trade index was the worst performers, down 0.33 percent.

On Thursday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 index closed at 96,226.99, up 0.28 percent, with a trading volume of 7.3 billion Turkish liras ($1.5 billion).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate fell to 4.5760 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Friday. It was 4.5840 at Thursday's close.

The euro/lira exchange rate rose to 5.3290 by market open -- down from 5.3180 at the previous close -- and one British pound traded at 6.0120 Turkish liras versus 6.0230 at Thursday's close.

The price of Brent oil was $77.50 per barrel as of 10 a.m. local time (0700GMT) Friday, down from $78.02 at the previous close.

Turkey's exports in May 2018 totaled $14.3 billion -- up 5.3 percent year-on-year -- and its imports were $22.6 billion -- up 5.5 percent year-on-year -- while the country's foreign trade deficit rose by 5.7 percent year-on-year in May, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said Friday.