Turkey Wake-up call: Macro, Political and Equity News, 30th July

BIST jumped 2.27% yesterday as the bulls finally seemed to have taken control after the recent underperformance of Turkish stocks. BIST100 index opened on an uptick that marked the lowest point of the day and stayed on an upward path until the close. Banks again fell behind with the 1.18% gain for their sector index. EREGL, KCHOL, BIMAS, ARCLK, ASELS, TUPRS, and Koza Group names led the charge while SOKM, LOGO, AKSEN, and DOAS were some of the handful of decliners in the BIST100 universe. Coming to the last trading day of the month, our local macro agenda involves June'21 Foreign Trade numbers due at 10AM local time. Bloomberg consensus for monthly deficit at USD2.90bn vs preliminary data released earlier by the Ministry of Customs & Trade that are indicating a USD2.89bn (+1.0% yoy) trade gap for the month (Exports USD19.77bn (+46.9% yoy) // Imports USD22.66bn (+38.9% yoy)). Separately, Ministry of Tourism will disclose the tourist arrival numbers for June'21 at 11AM. Foreign tourist arrivals had jumped 3,038.8% yoy to 936k in May as the pandemic-related base effects were in play, bringing the cumulative yearly arrivals to 3.68mn visitors, still down 14.3% from the corresponding period of 2020. We anticipate a slight negative open for the BIST as the lower-than-expected Amazon sales performance is weighing on the sentiment in global markets. U.S. futures are down almost 0.9% in early trades and Asian bourses are mostly trading in the red. Lira is also reversing some of yesterday's gains as the USDTRY paid is at the 8.48-8.49 range vs 8.4505 at yesterday's closing bell.