USD/TRY Records Fresh All-Time Highs Near 9.0000

The Turkish lira depreciates to all-time lows vs. the greenback and lifts USD/TRY to fresh record highs just below the 9.0000 level on Friday.

Photo by Omid Armin on Unsplash

USD/TRY up on another Erdogan-CBRT round

USD/TRY clocked fresh all-time highs at the end of the week after news said that President R.T.Erdogan could be losing faith in S.Kavcioglu, the head of the Turkish Central Bank (CBRT).

In fact, rumors remained on the rise despite the CBRT unexpectedly reduced the One-Week Repo Rate by 100bps to 18% at its September meeting. Indeed, according to these speculations, President Erdogan deemed the recent interest rate cut as coming too late.

However, how unexpected the latest rate cut was is a matter of debate, as the central bank had previously announced that it will shift to the Core inflation (instead of the headline CPI) when it comes to set the policy rate.

While fundamentals in Turkey have exhibited quite a moderate recovery, including stellar figures for the GDP, inflation remains elevated, putting to rest previous forecasts that inflation could have peaked in May-June. On the latter, inflation in September rose to a 36-month high at 19.58%.

It seems S.Kavcioglu now has his days as CBRT Governor counted… no surprises here.

USD/TRY key levels

So far, the pair is gaining 0.78% at 8.9372 and a drop below 8.8297(monthly low Oct.1) would aim for 8.7345 (20-day SMA) and finally 8.6806 (monthly high Aug.11). On the other hand, the next up barrier lines up at 8.9708 (all-time high Oct.7) followed by 9.0000 (round level).