Turkey Wake-up call: Macro, Political and Equity News, 28th January

BIST took a 4.50% dive yesterday as the global market rout weighed heavily on Turkish stocks. After a flattish start, BIST100 index traded in a tight range around the no-change line until 1:30PM when sellers became the dominant force. Rest of the day saw an almost uninterrupted descent to close at the 1,467 bottom with the intraday losses triggering circuit-breakers in numerous stocks. Banks lost 4.07% on average. KCHOL, FROTO, EKGYO, TAVHL, ENJSA, AEFES, KOZAL, ASELS, SAHOL, KRDMD, and OTKAR topped the decliners while VESTL and ALBRK were among the rare gainers in the broad-based sell-off with 96 out of 100 constituents in the BIST100 closing lower for the day. Today, our local macro agenda highlight will be Central Bank governor Naci Agbal's presentation of the bank's quarterly inflation assessment report in an online press briefing starting at 10:30AM local time . Any notes on the Bank's forecasts on the path of inflation as well as the course of its monetary policy will be closely followed by investors. Separately, summary minutes of the latest Monetary Policy Council meeting will be released at 2PM. BIST is off to a negative open given ongoing weakness in global equity markets. U.S. futures are down 0.3% in early trades on top of 0.7-1.1% overnight losses in main indices after we left. Asian markets are all trading in the red as they play catch-up with yesterday's losses in the western hemisphere.