FxWirePro: Turkish lira seems unlikely to continue gaining, Russian Ruble to get momentary cushion from sovereign debt – RVs and outright trades

The Treasury Department released a list of 114 senior foreign political figures with close ties to Vladimir Putin and 95 oligarchs; and also presented two classified reports to Congress – one listing other potential entity names of interest and the other assessing the impact of imposing sanctions on Russia's sovereign debt.

The administration has decided, however, not to impose new sanctions, only to put foreign governments and private sector entities "on notice ... that significant transactions with listed Russian entities will result in sanctions."

The administration noted that specific sanctions will not need to be imposed because the legislation is, in fact, serving as a deterrent. This should bring near-term relief to the RUB.

The lira rallied hard last week with USDTRY falling back to 3.73 levels at one point on Friday. This might give the impression that the market is unconditionally supportive, and that Turkey’s military operations in Syria, or its high inflation, are no longer major concerns. But, it is worth pointing out that the lira rally has been more or less limited to the weak USD effect – on a half USD, half EUR basket basis, the lira has been flat or slightly weaker this year. Lira ‘strength’ is unlikely to last beyond this bout of dollar weakness.

We are bearish on TRY introducing new hedges, we hold an UW TRY but balanced out by a larger OW in RUB, which leaves us still net long carry in the region.

In outright trades, we focus on relative value vs RUB and option hedges taking advantage of the very low volatility and skew.

Short an equal-weighted basket of TRYRUB and ZARRUB (Entry: 9.6530; Target: 9.25)

We advocate buying USDTRY call (4.00) of far-month tenors and simultaneously, EURTRY call (4.83) (equal weighted USD notional) of similar expiry.

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