UPDATE - Turkish stocks down at daily close

UPDATES WITH MORE DAILY FIGURES

By Tuba Sahin

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's benchmark stock index ended Monday down with a 0.61% decline to close at 85,545.4 points.

After starting the first business day of the week at 86,505.55 points, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 index fell 526.88 points from 86,072.28 points at Friday's close.

Last week, the benchmark index posted a 0.83% decline. At the beginning of this year, the BIST 100 stood around 89,000 points.

During Monday's trading, the BIST 100 hovered between 85,309.68 points and 86,945.23 points -- 34 stocks on the index rose, 53 fell, and 13 were flat compared to the previous close.

Closing the day with a market value of some 567 billion Turkish liras ($93 billion), the benchmark index posted a daily trading volume of 3.8 billion Turkish liras ($631 million).

By market capitalization, Turkish conglomerate Koc Holding, private lenders Garanti BBVA and Akbank were the leading companies of BIST 100.

Shares of national flag carrier Turkish Airlines, Garanti BBVA, and polyester manufacturer Sasa recorded the highest trading volumes on Monday.

Shares of prominent hospital group MLP Saglik (MPARK) performed the best, rising 5.98%, and stocks of conglomerate Ittifak Holding (ITTFH) fell the most, down 5.38%.

The price of Brent oil was $68.01 per barrel as of 6 p.m. local time (1500GMT) on Monday -- with a day range of $67.28 to $68.03.