by Fred Fuld III
In case you missed it, the Turkish Lira has dropped over 26% during the last week and tanked 13.7% just on Friday. Many reasons have been claimed for the reasons for the financial crisis in Turkey, including the dissemination of “fake news”.
It’s not just the Turkey currency that has been sinking, the Turkish stocks have also been falling. As an example, the iShares MSCI Turkey ETF (TUR) is down 10.7% today.
For the investors and traders who like to take contrarian positions, Turkey stocks may be oversold and might be a buying opportunity, albeit a speculative one at that.
The fund’s three largest holdings are Turkiye Garanti Bankasi (GARAN), Akbank ( AKBNK), and Eregli Demir Ve Celik Fabrikalari (EREGL). Over 28% of the ETF holdings are in financial services, 18% in industrials, and 17.8% in basic materials.
If you want to invest directly in a Turkish company, you should consider Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri (TKC), which trades at 6.01 times trailing earnings and pays a yield of 3.57%. The company is a provider of provides wireless telephone services, sports and news entertainment, Internet services, and other telecommunications services.
Just remember, buying Turkish stocks right now is a very, very speculative play.
Disclosure: Author didn’t own any of the above at the time the article was written.