Turkey's Borsa Istanbul up at opening

By Tuba Sahin

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's benchmark index started Friday with a 266.75-point increase to open at 90,535.07.

During opening transactions on the last business day of the week, the BIST 100 index rose 0.30 percent.

The banking and holding sector indices went up 0.53 percent and 0.31 percent, respectively.

Among all sectors, the real estate investment trust sector index was the best performer -- up 0.86 percent -- while the leasing and factoring index started the day with the biggest decline, falling 4.75 percent.

At Thursday's closing session, the benchmark index was up 822.78 points, or 0.92 percent, to close at 90,268.32 points, with a total trading volume of 3.9 billion Turkish liras (approximately $1.07 billion).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate slipped to 3.6100 at 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Friday, compared to 3.6460 at Thursday's close.

Meanwhile, analysts say investors are expected to take action based on an industrial production report in the United Kingdom as well as employment and non-farm payroll data from the United States which are set to be released Friday.