Turkish stocks up at open

By Jeyhun Aliyev

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's benchmark stock index started the midweek trading day up 0.35 percent or 338.39 points to open at 97,070.15 points.

On the third transaction day of the week, the banking and holding sector indices gained 0.79 and 0.09 percent, respectively.

Among all sector indices, the construction sector index posted the best performance, up 0.88 percent, while the mining sector index faced the worst drop, down 0.11 percent.

On Tuesday, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 index rose 0.67 percent to close at 96,731.76 points with a trading volume of some 8.9 billion Turkish liras (around $1.46 billion), hovering between 95,536.85 points and 97,100.26 points during the sessions.

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate fell to 6.0920 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT), compared with Tuesday's closing rate of 6.1390.

The euro/lira rate dropped to 7.0120 on Wednesday morning, versus 7.0330 at the previous close, while one British pound was traded for 8.0380 Turkish liras, down from 8.0240 at Tuesday's close.

The price of Brent oil was $84.98 per barrel as of 10.05 a.m. local time (0705GMT) Wednesday, starting the day at $84.84, while it was around $66 at the beginning of this year.