UPDATE - Turkey’s Borsa Istanbul up at close

UPDATES WITH MORE DETAILS

By Yunus Girgin

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's benchmark stock index closed Thursday at 1,546.41 points, up 0.38%.

Starting the day at 1,548.04 points, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 index rose 5.82 points over the midweek's close of 1,540.59 points.

During Thursday's trading, the BIST 100 hovered between 1,544.22 and 1,562.83 points – 39 stocks on the index rose, 56 fell, and five were flat compared to the previous close.

Closing the day with a market value of around 1.18 trillion Turkish liras ($168.7 billion), the benchmark index posted a daily trading volume of 37.8 billion liras ($5.4 billion).

Shares of state lender Halkbank, polyester producer Sasa Polyester, and gold miner Koza Altin recorded the highest trading volumes during the day.

Stocks of agricultural insecticides producer Hektas climbed the most with a 9.99% hike, while shares of state lender VakifBank dropped the most, falling 3.53%.

One ounce of gold sold for $1,785.00 by market close, down from $1,790.75 at the previous close, according to data from Borsa Istanbul's Precious Metals and Diamond Markets.

The price of Brent crude oil was around $64.20 per barrel as of 6.10 p.m. local time (1510GMT) on Thursday.