Turkey Wake-up call: Macro, Political and Equity News, 12th April

BIST declined 1.65% on Friday after a day totally spent in the negative territory, carrying its weekly losses to 2.58%. Benchmark BIST100 had a downtick start and moved in a tight range in the morning hours before selling pressure intensified after 1PM. The index dipped at 1,375 around 4PM, followed by a partial rebound till the close. Banks dropped 1.53% on average in line with the broader market while HALKB stood out with its strength. EREGL, CCOLA, TATGD, and YATAS were among the handful gainers in the BIST100 space while aviation stocks, FROTO, MGROS, SAHOL, SISE, DOHOL, INDES, MPARK, and KOZAL topped the long list of decliners. Coming to start of the new week, our local macro agenda involves February'21 Balance of Payments data due at 10AM local time. Bloomberg survey puts the monthly CA deficit at USD2.50bn vs the USD1.38bn deficit recorded for the same month of 2020. Separately, unemployment statistics for February'21 will also be released at 10AM. Headline unemployment had climbed 0.4pp on a sequential basis to 13.4% in January while remaining below the 14.1% level for the same month of 2020 although this was mostly attributable to the 1.1pp yoy decline in the labor participation rate to 49.5%. Lastly, Treasury will reissue 2-year fixed-rate bonds and 5-year TLREF-indexed bonds in double domestic borrowing auctions today. Will hold two more auctions on Wednesday ahead of this week's hefty TL12.94bn redemption. BIST seems off to a sideways start given mixed signals from abroad and a flattish lira. S&P futures are down 0.3% in early trades in partial reversal of 0.6-0.7% overnight gains in main indices after the hour we left while Asian indices are mostly trading in the red.