UPDATE - Turkey's Borsa Istanbul down at midweek's close

UPDATE WITH MORE DETAILS

By Gokhan Ergocun

ISTANBUL (AA) - Turkey's benchmark stock index on Wednesday closed at 119,196.09 points, dropping 0.32% from the previous close.

Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 index started the day at 120,036.23 points. As of the daily close, it had lost 378.01 points from Tuesday's close of 119,574.10 points.

During the day, the index hovered between 118,570.59 points and 120,464.81 points.

The total market value of the BIST 100 was around 830.16 billion Turkish liras ($137 billion) by market close, with a daily trading volume of 11.4 billion Turkish liras ($1.9 billion).

On the third transaction day of the week, 18 stocks on the index rose, 79 were down, and three were flat compared to Tuesday.

The highest trading volumes were posted by defense giant Aselsan, national flag carrier Turkish Airlines, and energy company Odas.

Automotive company Ford Otosan was the best performer, with its shares up 3.77%, while telecommunications firm Karel dropped the most, down 4.18%.

The price of one ounce of gold was $1,608.95 by market close, up from $1,588 at the previous close, according to data from Borsa Istanbul's Precious Metals and Diamond Markets.

The price of Brent crude oil was around $58.70 per barrel as of 6 p.m. (1500GMT) on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Borsa Istanbul announced on Wednesday that it will remove two zeros from its indices on April 27.