Turkish stocks grew over 45 percent in past 8 months

By Erhan Cihan Unal

ANKARA (AA) - In theory, those who invested their money in stocks and shares in Borsa Istanbul, Turkey's main stock exchange, earned a profit of over 45 percent in the past eight months.

Borsa Istanbul’s BIST 100 index, that closed at 73,995.20 point at end of the November 2016, reached 107,531.44 point at end of the July, an increase of 45.3 percent.

In this period, the total value of the companies traded in Borsa Istanbul rose to 834 billion Turkish liras (some $235.4 billion) from 577 billion Turkish liras (around $162.9 billion).

During the month of July, the BIST 100 index grew 7.06 percent in July while the U.S.'s Dow Jones and the U.K'.s FTSE 100 indexes were up 2.54 and 0.81 percent, respectively.

Germany's DAX and the Japan's Nikkei indexes closed the month with decrease.

During the January-July period, the BIST 100 index boasted a higher performance than both major world stock exchanges and developing countries' share market indexes.

During this period, the BIST 100 index rose 37.6 percent while the Dow Jones grew 10.76 percent, DAX 5.55 percent, Nikkei 4.55 percent and FTSE 100 was up 3.21 percent.

The MSCI EM index, a benchmark for developing country stocks, yielded 23 percent.