Turkey Wake-up call: Macro, Political and Equity News, 25th October

BIST added another 1.68% as institutional inflows to a bunch of blue-chip names despite the pressure on lira and major global bourses, possibly on bets on depressed valuations of Turkish stocks in USD terms. This carried the weekly gains in the index to 4.99%. Banks slightly outperformed with the 1.91% gain in their sector index. KCHOL, SAHOL, EREGL, KRDMD, ENJSA, LOGO, DOAS, and ISMEN topped the non-bank gainers for the day while FROTO, SOKM, BRISA, ULKER, TURSG, and AKSEN were some of the handful of decliners in the BIST100 space. Today, our local macro agenda involves October'21 Manufacturing Capacity Utilization Rate (CUR stood at a 38-month high of 78.1% in September'21 and was 75.4% back in October'20) and Real Sector Confidence index (was at 113.4 in September'21 and had stood at 103.9 back in October'20) both to be released at 10AM local time. BIST seems headed into a slight negative open given the mixed sentiment abroad and continued weakness in lira (USDTRY at 9.7430 levels vs 9.6194 at Friday's closing bell) following President Erdogan's call over the weekend for expulsion of the ambassadors of the United States and nine other Western countries for demanding the release of philanthropist Osman Kavala. U.S. futures are up a few points in early trades while Asian markets present a mixed picture.