Turkey Wake-up call: Macro, Political and Equity News, 21st February

BIST climbed 1.12% on Friday as buying in the last 30 minutes of the session propped up the index to its daily peak after a volatile day. This trimmed the cumulative weekly losses in the BIST100 index to 0.91%. Banks gained 0.86% on average with AKBNK outperforming peers and the two state lenders falling behind. TCELL, EREGL, ENJSA, LOGO, ODAS, AKSA, ALARK, and INDES led the non-bank gainers while SOKM, OTKAR, KCHOL, DOAS, ISMEN, ALKIM, and ARDYZ stood out among the rare decliners in the BIST100 space. Coming to this morning, our local macro agenda involves the Ministry's tourist arrival numbers for January'22 due at 11AM local time. Foreign tourist arrivals had jumped 170.6% yoy to 1.89mn in December as the pandemic-related base effects were in play, bringing the cumulative yearly arrivals to 24.71mn visitors, up 94.1% from a year ago. Separately, Treasury will reissue 5-year fixed-rate bonds and 7-year FRNs in double domestic borrowing actions today. Will hold two more auctions tomorrow ahead of this week's massive TL51.09bn in cumulative local redemptions. BIST seems headed for an uptick start on Friday's momentum as well as the news of a diplomatic summit involving the U.S. and Russian leaders for finding a peaceful solution for Ukraine disputes this week. U.S. futures are up 0.6% in early trades as the c.0.9% overnight losses after we left on Friday are mostly being reversed while Asian stock markets are mostly trading with slight losses.