It's true - the "big guys" who make more in ten minutes trading than many of us make in a normal working lifetime rarely get it wrong, and the smart ones amongst them NEVER get it wrong.
Since Davutoğlu's resignation, that some are actually describing as a form of coup, it would appear that outside investors are bailing from Turkey faster than the head disappears from a pint of Efes. The
HDN describes it as "portfolio outflow", an economic phrase that doesn't sound quite so bad as "bailing". This month has seen more investors leave Turkey than any other this year, by 12th May they had dumped $469mil of Turkish stocks and bonds - and the process is still ongoing.
The
Al-Monitor published an article on the same day, where Tim Ash from Nomura, a Japanese financial house, is quoted as saying:
"Erdogan and his partisans could attribute the 14 years of success to Erdogan's political wisdom. Looking at election results, that may well be true. But the economic miracle in the AKP era has very little to do with Erdogan. Actually the trend for non-traditional policies has negatively affected the economy and market confidence," Ash wrote.
Ash attributed the economic miracle to Erdogan's former economic staff Ali Babacan, Durmus Yilmaz, Ibrahim Canakci and Mehmet Simsek. From this team of experts, only Simsek remains, and it is not yet known whether he will have a seat in the new cabinet. Erdogan's advisers have said that some names might change, but policies won't.I think most folks with half a brain would agree with him - unfortunately Erdoğan is now "the man". He's in charge, and it yet remains to be seen if the Central Bank will continue to act independently of political interference.
From a purely selfish perspective, I'm glad we no longer have any major assets in Turkey. Rumours about deals being done in dark smoke free rooms (
) between the MHP and AKP, to further the changes to the constitution and allow the "all powerful one" to become the "even more all powerful one" do not bode well for the man (and woman) in the street, in Turkey.
JF