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

BIST eked out a 0.28% gain after a day mostly spent in the negative territory yesterday. After an uptick open, BIST100 turned south and stayed below the no-change mark until around 5PM. Buyers in the last hour helped the market climb back to a slight positive close while banks were again lagging amid the 0.87% loss for their sector index. MGROS, DOAS, TSKB, HEKTS, BIZIM, AYGAZ, AKSEN, ULKER, SOKM, and KRDMD led the gainers while KOZAL, PGSUS, MPARK, OTKAR, TTKOM, and ENJSA were among the weak spots. Today, our key macro agenda item will be the Monetary Policy Council meeting with the decision on policy rates due 2PM local time. Consensus (Bloomberg survey) call is no change in the benchmark weekly repo rate of 17.00% after cumulative increases of 675 bps in the previous two meetings while a handful of participants anticipate another hike of between 50 and 100bps. Separately, January'21 Consumer Confidence Index compiled by TurkStat is due at 10AM. In the revised series, the index had remained unchanged on a sequential basis at 80.1 in December. BIST is off to a positive start as global stock markets are climbing to new highs while lira is also gaining some ground with the USDTRY pair at 7.4184 vs 7.4320 at yesterday's closing bell. U.S. futures are up 0.3% in early trades while Asian equities are almost all trading in the green.