Tuba Şahin
March 15, 2017•Update: March 15, 2017
ANKARA
Turkey's benchmark index started the day with a 236.07-point increase to open at 89,372.60 on Wednesday.
On the third transaction day of the week, the BIST 100 index opened up 0.26 percent.
The banking and holding sector indices rose 0.32 percent and 0.14 percent, respectively.
Among all sectors, the real estate investment trusts sector index was the best performer -- up 1.39 percent -- while the insurance index started Wednesday down 0.16 percent.
In Tuesday's closing session, the benchmark index was down 293.2 points or 0.33 percent with a total trading volume of 3.4 billion Turkish liras (approximately $908 million).
The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate decreased slightly to 3.7400 at 9.30 a.m. local time (0630GMT) on Wednesday, compared with 3.7480 at Tuesday's close.
In local data, Turkey’s Finance Ministry will share February budget realizations, and externally Turkish markets will focus on the U.S. Fed's policy decision on Wednesday, expected to be announced after the market closes.
Meanwhile, The Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) announced that unemployment rose 1.9 percentage point year-on-year to 12.7 percent in December.
