Turkish lira slides due to trade war unease - regain momentum

The Turkish lira on Monday weakened more than 1% against the US dollar after briefly tumbling to 6.47 overnight in what market watchers described as a “flash crash” as Japanese investors cut risk assets over Sino-U.S. trade war worries.

The lira stood at 5.8160 against the dollar at 0628 GMT, on Monday weakening from a close of 5.7540 on Friday. After a currency crisis wiped nearly 30% off the lira’s value in 2018, it has fallen 9% this year.

The China-U.S. trade war, which intensified in recent days, “means that EM FX will continue to weaken for the foreseeable future. In the absence of a thawing in trade frictions, it remains a market to be structurally short EM and buy dollars on any dip,” currency analysts at Societe Generale said in a note.

On Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced an additional duty on some $550 billion of targeted Chinese goods, hours after China unveiled retaliatory tariffs on $75 billion worth of U.S. goods.