Turkey's Borsa Istanbul up at open

By Tuba Sahin

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's stock exchange rose 0.29 percent, or 266.00 points, to open at 93,268.93 points on Friday.

The BIST banking and holding sector indices climbed 0.33 percent and 0.24 percent, respectively.

Among all sector indices, the wholesale and retail trade sector index posted the best performance, up 0.85 percent, while the insurance sector index had the worst, down 0.24 percent.

On Thursday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 closed at 93,002.93, up 0.74 percent, or 680.98 points, with a trade volume of 8.05 billion Turkish liras ($1.66 billion).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate dropped to 4.8180 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Friday, from 4.8310 at Thursday's close.

The euro/lira exchange rate rose to 5.6160 in the open market -- from 5.6090 at the previous close -- while one British pound traded for 6.2869 Turkish liras versus 6.2820 at the previous close.

The price of Brent oil rose to $72.84 per barrel as of 10.00 a.m. local time (0700GMT) Friday, from $72.58 at the previous close.