Istanbul Stock Exchange last year’s best instrument

ISTANBUL

A trader joyfuly welcomes stock moves at the Istanbul bourse building. DAILY NEWS photo

The Istanbul Stock Exchange (İMKB) gained 52.55 percent in 2012, surpassing other investment tools in a year when the Turkish Lira also appreciated against the U.S. dollar.

The Istanbul Stock Exchange (İMKB), which recently became “Borsa Istanbul” after a recent change in the law, was crowned as the most lucrative investment instrument with the 52.55 percent rise that leveraged 1530 at the end of the year liras for investors’ initial 1000 liras.

Compared to the end point of 2011, which was 51,266.62, the bourse reached its record high by closing 2012 at 78,208.44, representing one the largest yearly increases in the world.

The main sources of the rise were the spill-over of the global excess liquidity and Fitch’s decision to upgrade Turkey to investment grade, which is likely to boost the Turkish economy.

Bonds also gain

Treasury bonds gaining 11.48 percent followed the bourse, while the deposit premium remained at a 10 percent average. Since gold’s returns were not as spectacular as in the past few years and remained steady, investors lost against inflation. However, in global markets gold bounced to $1,660 per ounce, a gain of more than 6 percent. Because the dollar depreciated against the lira, the gram price of gold stayed almost unchanged at 95.1 liras compared to the beginning of the year.

Foreign exchange investors were also disappointed this year. The U.S. dollar fell below 1.79 liras with a 5.4 percent loss, while the euro dropped 4 percent to 2.35 liras.

Meanwhile, the size of the Turkish financial sector has almost tripled in five years, rising to 2.148 trillion liras in 2012, the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency has revealed. During the period, the size of Turkish banks grew by around 2.5 times to reach 1.308 billion liras, while U.S and European banks grew only slightly.