Turkey's Borsa Istanbul up at open

By Tuba Sahin

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's stock exchange rose by 0.43 percent, or 407.72 points, to open at 95,776.31 points on Thursday.

The BIST banking and holding sector indices surged 0.65 percent and 0.61 percent, respectively.

Among all sector indices, the tourism sector index posted the best performance, up 1.04 percent, while the insurance sector index saw the worst, slightly down 0.06 percent.

On Wednesday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 closed at 95,368.59, up 3.51 percent, or 3,234.78 points, with a trade volume of 11.3 billion Turkish liras ($2.3 billion).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate dropped to 4.8160 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Thursday, from 4.8350 at Wednesday's close.

The euro/lira exchange rate rose to 5.6610 in the open market -- from 5.6570 at the previous close -- while one British pound traded for 6.3760 Turkish liras versus 6.3730 at the previous close.

The price of Brent oil climbed to $74.56 per barrel as of 10.00 a.m. local time (0700GMT) Thursday, from $73.93 at the previous close.