Turkey's Borsa Istanbul up at opening session

By Gokhan Ergocun

ISTANBUL (AA) - Turkey's stock exchange rose 0.18 percent, or 166.58 points, to open at 93,005.79 points Monday.

On the first transaction day of the week, both banking and holding sector indices dropped 0.01 percent.

Among all sector indices, the wholesale and retail trade sector index was the best, up 1.29 percent, while the tourism sector index was the worst, down 0.36 percent.

On Friday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 closed at 92,839.21, down 0.71 percent, or 667.01 points, with a trading volume of 6.5 billion liras ($1.18 billion).

The USD/TRY exchange rate stood at 5.4810 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Monday. It was 5.4800 at the last week's close.

The euro/lira exchange rate dropped to 6.2050 by market open -- from 6.2190 at the previous close -- and one British pound traded for 7.0850 Turkish liras over 7.1380 at the previous close.

The price of Brent oil rose to $71.47 per barrel as of 10.00 a.m. local time (0700GMT) Monday, compared to $69.78 on Friday.