Turkey Wake-up call: Macro, Political and Equity News, 10th March

BIST increased 1.23% yesterday as the better sentiment abroad and the rebound in lira attracted some buyers to Turkish stocks. BIST100 index had an uptick start and spent the entire day in positive territory. Banks again lagged with the 0.45% gain in their sector index as heavyweights GARAN and AKBNK seemed to face some institutional outflows. KCHOL, EREGL, BIMAS, THYAO, PGSUS, ENKAI, ULKER, AKSEN, TATGD, HEKTS, and SOKM topped the non-bank gainers for the day while INDES, MPARK, VESTL, DOAS, TTRAK, and Koza Group stocks were among the fewer weak spots. Today, unemployment statistics for December'20 are to be released at 10AM local time. Bloomberg consensus at 13.5%. Headline unemployment had climbed 0.2pp on a sequential basis to 12.9% in November while remaining below the 13.3% level for the same month of 2019 although this was mostly attributable to the 3.2pp yoy decline in the labor participation rate to 49.3%. BIST seems off to a sideways start with a negative bias amid mixed signals from peer markets and some slide in lira (USDTRY close to 7.64 levels vs 7.6091 at yesterday's closing bell). U.S. futures are down 0.2% in early trades on top of the 0.2-0.6% overnight losses after we left while Asian benchmarks are cruising in different directions.