Turkey's Borsa Istanbul closes Friday with new records

ANKARA

Turkey's benchmark stock index ended with gains on Friday to close at 1,737.33 points -- both a daily and weekly closing record high level.

This marked the sixth consecutive week BIST 100 posted a gain, while it increased 6.03% this week.

After starting the day at 1,748.72 points, Borsa Istanbul's BIST 100 index gained 0.45 point, or 0.03%, from Thursday's close of 1,736.88 points.

The BIST 100's lowest value during the day was 1,727.62 points and its daily high was 1,759.06 points.

The total market value of the index was over 1.37 trillion Turkish liras ($128.6 billion) by market close, with a daily trading volume of more than 29 billion Turkish liras ($2.6 billion).

A total of 66 stocks on the index rose, while 32 fell, and two remained unchanged compared to Thursday's close.

The highest trading volumes were posted by national flag carrier Turkish Airlines, iron and steel producer Kardemir, and private lender Garanti BBVA.

Shares of Gozde Girisim performed the best, rising 8.53%, while the stocks of airline firm Pegasus dropped the most, 8.22%.

One ounce of gold traded for $1,860.25 by market close, slightly up from $1,859.20 at the previous close, according to data from Borsa Istanbul's Precious Metals and Diamond Markets.

The price of Brent crude oil was down 2.5% to $79.18 per barrel as of 6.36 p.m. local time (1536GMT).