Turkey ETF Slides Ahead Of Thanksgiving On Political Crisis

A Thanksgiving spread is not laid until the Turkey makes its presence felt on the table. Apart from the bird, another Turkey has been grossing investors’ attention this Thanksgiving. Yes, we’re talking about the country called Turkey.

Let’s look at the investment odds surrounding this country right now and see why it’s not winning favor. This time, heightened tensions with the United States and the central bank’s fight to contain inflation are acting as headwinds to Turkey investments.

Political Uncertainty

Investors are mulling over the case in which the United States has threatened “to expose how powerful figures in Turkey may have helped undermine U.S. sanctions on Iran.” Turkey government cites this as a “conspiracy” and an effort to recur the coup attempt last year in July (read: Turkish Lira and TUR ETF Plummet on "Coup Attempt").

Bonds dived, pushing the yield on the benchmark 10-year debt to a record high on Nov 20. This happened despite the central bank’s comments “that it would start auctioning as much as $3 billion in instruments through year-end to help corporate borrowers manage their foreign-exchange positions.” Turkish currency lira plunged to its weakest level since the start of the year.

High Inflation

Consumer prices in Turkey rose 11.90% year over year in October of 2017, up from an 11.20% ascent in September as well as market expectations of an 11.50% rise. This was the highest inflation rate since October 2008. There seems to be an issue between the central bank and the government. While the central bank sees a greater need for higher rates amid high inflation, the political pressure is for lower rates.

Bright Spots

However, the growth picture remained decent. The Turkish economy grew 5.1% year over year in the second quarter of 2017, falling slightly from an upwardly revised 5.2% expansion in the previous three months and below market expectations of 5.3%.

Turkish investments in fact offered great returns on economic improvement and lesser political upheaval in the first half of 2017. So far this year, Turkey ETF iShares MSCI Turkey (MC:TUR) is up about 22.2% compared with 14.4% returns for the S&P 500 index. The trend soured in the last three months when TUR lost about 15% while the key U.S. index gained about 6.3% (read: Top 3 Foreign ETFs of Q2).

All in all, tensions persist in the country and it’s better not to get a taste of this ETF now. Below we highlight the key details of the fund.

TUR in Focus

The ETF provides a pure play exposure to 64 Turkish stocks. The fund is highly concentrated on its top 10 holdings which make up for nearly 60% of assets. Financials dominates the fund’s returns with about 35%of the portfolio while industrials, consumer staples and materials take double-digit exposure in the basket.

The fund has amassed around $353.1 million in its asset base and trades in solid volume of about 360,000 shares per day on average. The fund charges 64 bps in annual fees from investors and yields 2.73% annually (as of Nov 20, 2017). TUR has a Zacks ETF Rank #3 with a ‘High’ risk outlook (see: all broad Emerging Market ETFs here).

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