We’re off to a nervous start with trading this week after news over the weekend that the Turkish government has sacked the governor of the Turkish Central Bank. Naturally enough, this has brought a focus particularly on to the Turkish Lira, which plunged almost 20% at this morning’s reopening of foreign exchange markets.
Pressure could well continue, and the move comes after the central bank last week lifted rates in Turkey by 2%; clearly the government was not happy with the move. We’re also expecting pressure across the Asia-Pacific region this week on indices.
Share market investors may be nervous after a fairly weak finish to trading in the US on Friday night. Although the NASDAQ did manage to record a slight gain, both the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average came under sustained pressure and finished in the red.
We’re expecting to see that pressure continue in Asia-Pacific trading at least today. We’re also watching crude oil markets very closely. After a couple of weeks of pressure on prices, we saw a good bounce in oil prices on Friday night and there could be further gains for crude oil over the course of this week, alongside those buoyant base metals markets. In particular, Copper is trading at multi-year highs.
