Turkish shares, lira close lower

ANKARA (AA) - Turkish shares closed slightly lower Monday, with losses in the banking and transport sectors driving shares down.

Borsa Istanbul's BIST-100, the country’s benchmark index, closed down at 0.25 percent (192.32 points) lower at 77,953.27.

On the first trading day of the week, the banking sector index lost about 0.70 percent and the transport sector index was also down 2.38 percent.

But, the tourism sector ended 2.15 percent higher for the day with a total trading volume of 2.3 billion Turkish liras ($781 million).

Borsa Istanbul's most actively traded stocks were Garanti Bank, Turkish Airlines, state lender Halkbank, private lender Akbank and energy giant Tupras.

One of the biggest winners was Alcatel Lucent Teletas Telekomunikasyon A.S. (ALCTL), which saw an increase of 6.45 percent or 0.41 points to trade at 6.77, following a 6.36 percent increase after the company reported 16.4 million Turkish liras of profit ($5.4 million) for the first half of the year on Friday.

The Borsa Istanbul Gold Exchange index lost 0.10 percent in value Monday compared with Thursday's closing, with gold trading at 126,300 Turkish liras per kilogram.

The Turkish lira lost against dollar at 2.9460 against the U.S. dollar compared with Friday's close of 2.9320 as the greenback was firm against global currencies in overseas markets amid rising prospects for a rate hike by the U.S. Federal Reserve.

At the first bell on Monday, American benchmark West Texas Intermediate traded at $47.86 a barrel with a 2.6 percent decline, while international benchmark Brent crude was at $49.40 per barrel -- a 2.9 percent loss.

Meanwhile, the Turkish Central Bank’s monetary policy committee is due to meet Tuesday to decide on potential changes to the overnight lending rate following recent reductions over the last four months.