Turkey Wake-up call: Macro, Political and Equity News, 15th September

BIST added 0.42% yesterday as the strength in some key non-financials made up for the weakness in banks. Index opened on an uptick and spent the entire day in a relatively tight 7-point range in positive territory. Banking index was down 0.44% for the day. Sisecam Group names, OTKAR, DOAS, KRDMD, EKGYO, ENJSA, HEKTS, and CLEBI topped the gainers while VESTL, TAVHL, PGSUS, CCOLA, TCELL, and ARCLK were among the weaker non-banks. Today, our local macro agenda highlight will be the August'20 central government budget numbers due at 11AM local time. Separately, TurkStat will release the residential sales data for August’20 at 10AM. Home sales had jumped 124.3% yoy to 229k units in June on the back of the 900.6% surge in mortgage-backed transactions as the consumers flocked to banks to take advantage of the historically-low mortgage rates and advantageous loan terms especially provided by the state lenders. Lastly, Treasury will reissue 2-year fixed-coupon bonds and 4-year TLREF-indexed bonds in double domestic borrowing auctions. Domestic redemption for the week is a hefty TL18.54bn while the Treasury has raised TL2.12bn in the auction held yesterday. BIST seems off to a slight positive start given continued optimism in global markets on vaccine hopes. U.S. futures are up 0.2% in early trades in reversal of 0.1-0.3% overnight losses after the hour we left and Asian markets are mostly trading in the green. Lira is a bit stronger with USDTRY pair at 7.4846 vs 7.4902 at yesterday's closing bell.