Turkish stocks up almost 3 pct at close

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey’s benchmark index closed the day with a 2.88 percent increase to stand over 86,000 points on Monday.

The BIST 100 index rose by 2,410.15 points to reach 86,237.54 points, which is a nine-month peak. The excessive total trading volume stood at 6.2 billion Turkish liras (approximately $1.63 billion).

On the first trading day of the week, the banking and holding sector indexes rose 5.29 and 1.51 percent respectively. The banking sector index increased the most while the tourism one was the only loser of the day, declining 0.59 percent.

The most heavily-traded stocks were private lender Garanti Bank, the country's national flag carrier Turkish Airlines, followed by other lenders Halkbank, Akbank and Yapi Kredi Bankasi.

Shares of Yapi Kredi Bankasi, one of the oldest private lenders in Turkey, were the top performers of the day with a 11.58 percent rise. Net Turizm stocks, traded on the tourism sector index, dropped the most, with a 2.36 percent fall.

The Borsa Istanbul Gold Exchange index increased by 0.85 percent while gold was trading at 146,100 Turkish liras (around $38,337) per kilogram as of 4.30 p.m. (1330GMT).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate decreased steeply to stand at 3.8090 as of 5 p.m. (1400GMT) Monday, compared to 3.8730 at Friday's closing session.

Analysts said that since Fitch downgraded Turkey's credit rating to "BB+", from "BBB-" with a stable outlook, last Friday, investors abandoned negative expectations for Turkish lira-denominated assets.

On Tuesday, investors are expected to follow Turkey's foreign trade figures of 2016 that will be released by the Turkish Statistical Institution, as well as first inflation report of 2017 by the Turkish Central Bank.