Turkey's Borsa Istanbul up at opening session

By Gokhan Ergocun

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's stock exchange rose 0.71 percent, or 689,54 points, to open at 97,346.96 points Monday.

On the first transaction day of the week, the banking and holding sector indices rose 1.18 percent and 0.74 percent, respectively.

While all sector indices start the day on the rise, the transportation sector index posted the best performance, up 1.56 percent.

Last week, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 closed Friday at 96,657.42, up 2.02 percent, or 1,909.89 points, with a trading volume of 10.5 billion Turkish liras (nearly $1.8 billion).

The USD/TRY exchange dropped by 1.5 percent to 5.8420 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Monday. It was 5.9320 at Friday's close.

The euro/Lira exchange rate was also down at 6.7520 by market open -- from 6.8510 at the previous close -- and one British pound traded for 7.6760 Turkish liras versus 7.8240 at the previous close.

The price of Brent oil rose to $81.22 per barrel as of 10.00 a.m. local time (0700GMT) Monday, compared to $80.50 on Friday.

Turkey's unemployment rate rose slightly by 0.1 percent to reach 10.8 percent -- 3.5 million people -- in July 2018, Turkish Statistical Institute announced Monday.