Turkey Wake-up call: Macro, Political and Equity News, 11th February

BIST retreated 0.20% yesterday as the weakness in global markets after the U.S. inflation data erased the earlier gains for the index. Banks lost 0.37% on average as AKBNK reversed Wednesday's outperformance while ISCTR held up better. TTKOM, TCELL, TUPRS, ALARK, MGROS, GOZDE, and ISDMR led the non-bank gainers while SISE, TOASO, KRDMD, AEFES, PETKM, ARDYZ, and INDES stood out among the weakest names. Today, our local macro agenda is loaded, starting with the December'21 Balance of Payments data due at 10AM local time. Bloomberg survey puts the monthly CA deficit at USD4.20bn vs the USD3.44bn deficit recorded for the same month of 2020. Separately, December'21 Industrial Production numbers are also due at 10AM. Bloomberg consensus +10.9% yoy based on the estimates for calendar-adjusted series and +0.3% mom based on the seasonally & calendar-adjusted series. Lastly, CBT's monthly expectations survey will be revealed at 10AM too. Later in the evening, Fitch has a scheduled review of Turkey's sovereign rating for today and any related announcements are expected to be released after markets close. Only one out of the 9 economists surveyed by Foreks predict Fitch to cut the rating by one notch and change the outlook to Stable while the other expect the agency to affirm its BB- rating (3 notches below the investment-grade) and the Negative outlook. BIST seems off to a negative start given 1.4-1.6% overnight losses in key U.S. indices after we left and another c.0.9% loss in futures this morning. Asian stock markets are almost all trading in the red.