Turkey's Borsa Istanbul tops 118,000 pts at opening

By Gokhan Ergocun

ISTANBUL (AA) - Turkey's benchmark stock index rose by 0.22%, or 260.25 points, on Friday, to start the last transaction day at 118,250.70 points.

At Thursday's close, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 index jumped 4.53% to reach 117,990.45 points, hitting the highest close since March 2018, with a daily trading volume of 16.4 billion Turkish liras ($2.8 billion).

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate stood at 5.8810 as of 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Friday, which was also at 5.8810 at Thursday's close.

The euro/Turkish lira exchange rate also stood at 6.5350, versus 6.5330, and one British pound traded for 7.7130 Turkish liras, versus 7.6970 at the previous close.

One barrel of Brent crude oil sold for around $65.30 as of 10 a.m. local time (0700GMT) on Friday.