Turkey's Borsa Istanbul up in opening session

By Gokhan Ergocun

ISTANBUL (AA) - Turkey's stock exchange rose 0.25 percent, or 236.18 points, to open at 93,523.34 points Thursday.

On the fourth transaction day of the week, the banking sector index drops 0.03 percent while the holding sector index increased 0.31 percent.

Among all sector indices, the food beverage sector index posted the best performance, up 1.55 percent, while the wholesale and retail trade sector was the worst, down 0.63 percent.

On Wednesday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 closed at 93,287.16, up 0.62 percent or 578.60 points, with a trading volume of 7.5 billion Turkish liras ($1.37 billion).

The US dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate stood at 5.4610 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Thursday, compared with 5.4610 at Wednesday's close.

The euro/lira exchange rate rose to 6.1980 by market open -- versus 6.1680 at the previous close -- and one British pound traded for 7.1270 Turkish liras over 7.0820 at the previous close.

The price of Brent oil dropped to $66.31 per barrel as of 10.00 a.m. local time (0700GMT) Thursday. It was $67.26 on Wednesday.

Unemployment rate rose by 0.5 percentage points to 11.1 percent -- 3.67 million persons -- year-on-year in August 2018, Turkish Statistical Institute announced on Thursday.