Turkish Central Bank Gets Desperate to Save Its Currency

Turkey did respond with a rate hike, but the hike was a larger hike than just about anyone was expecting. Higher interest rates are targeted to bring in foreign investment funds chasing higher yields, and that is aimed to stave off further currency slides.

The Turkish Central Bank raised overnight lending rates to 12% from an already high 7.75%. The one-week repo rate was raised to 10% from 4.5%, and the overnight borrowing rate was raised to 8% from 3.5%.

Most estimates were for a raise of more than 2% and up to 3%, so this went above and beyond the call. The Turkish lira was down 11% so far in January, but almost half of those losses were erased as investors began to expect an emergency action. Actions of this magnitude are not exactly normal, but this hike was even more than what we have seen when the central bank defends the lira.

Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri AS (NYSE: TKC), or Turkcell, was down 2% to $12.06 on Tuesday against a 52-week range of $11.97 to $17.02. That low was also hit on Tuesday. This is Turkey’s major cellular and mobile provider. It is actively traded in New York.

The key ETF for Turkey is the iShares MSCI Turkey (NYSEArca: TUR) was up 4-cents to $42.54 on Tuesday, against a 52-week range of $40.92 to $77.40.

Turkish Investment Fund, Inc. (NYSE: TKF) is the closed-end fund which tracks Turkish stocks, and it closed down 0.5% at $10.15 on Tuesday against a 52-week range of $9.92 to $19.92.

National Bank of Greece SA (NYSE: NBG) is of course a Greek bank trading as a New York ADR, but it closed down 4% at $4.48 on Tuesday against a split-adjusted 52-week range of $2.85 to $24.70. The Greek bank owns Finansbank in Turkey, which had some 658 branches after opening 76 new branches and the number of employees reached 13,850 as of October 31, 2013. The bank has several other countries it operates in, but Turkey is about one-third of its whole international employee base and almost half of its entire ex-Greece unit count. For a comparison, NBG’s Greek bank network is only 540 branches and 1,529 ATMs.