Turkey Wake-up call: Macro, Political and Equity News, 17th June

BIST lost 0.78% yesterday after a rather eventless day that was mostly spent in the negative territory. Sellers dominated the scene especially after 3PM and pushed the market to close at its intraday bottom. Banks were weaker with the 1.38% retreat in their sector index. Grocery chains, ULKER, KOZAL, FROTO, and ENJSA topped the fewer gainers for the day while PGSUS, KRDMD, CIMSA, AKSEN, DOAS, MAVI, ISMEN, YATAS, and and AEFES were some of the weakest non-banks. Today, our macro agenda highlight will be the monthly Monetary Policy Council meeting with the decision on policy rates due 2PM local time. All of the participants in the Bloomberg survey expect the MPC to keep its benchmark weekly repo rate unchanged at 19.00% for the third month running, given the sticky inflation as well as recent pressure on the Lira. BIST seems off to negative start given the sour sentiment in global markets after yesterday's FED meeting signalling a faster-than-expected pace of tightening. Lira is softer alongside other EM currencies with USDTRY pair around the 8.61 mark vs 8.5402 at yesterday's closing bell. U.S. futures are down c.0.3% on top of the 0.5-0.6% overnight losses after the hour we left and Asian bourses are mostly trading in the red.