Turkey Wake-up call: Macro, Political and Equity News, 18th February, Global Securities

BIST lost 1.54% yesterday as the afternoon sell-off triggered by reports of escalating tensions in eastern Ukraine erased earlier gains and led to a close at the daily low. Banks held up slightly better with the 0.83% loss in their sector index amid some resilience of GARAN and YKBNK. TAVHL, ALARK, KOZAA, BRISA, and ISGYO were some of the rare gainers among the BIST100 constituents while TTKOM, TCELL, THYAO, KRDMD, SISE, PGSUS, TKFEN, SOKM, OTKAR, HEKTS, and GOZDE topped the decliners. Today, our local macro agenda involves February'22 Consumer Confidence Index compiled by TurkStat due 10AM local time. In the revised series, the index had rebounded 6.2% from its all-time low in December to 73.2 in January amid some respite in the lira. Separately, TurkStat will release the residential sales data for January’22 also at 10AM. Home sales had jumped 113.7% yoy to 227k units in December on the back of 209.3% surge in mortgage-backed transactions as consumers sought wealth protection in real estate amid currency rout. December data had carried the cumulative FY21 sales to 1,492k units, down 0.5% from a year ago, mainly due to the 48.6% plunge in mortgage-backed sales. BIST seems off to an uptick start amid a somewhat better risk appetite in global markets this morning on reports of a meeting between top American and Russian diplomats next week. U.S. futures are up c.0.7% in early trades while we note the 0.5-0.9% overnight losses after we left while Asian stock indices present a rather mixed picture.