The Turkish lira hit its lowest level against the U.S. dollar on record, as investors bet that the economic pain from COVID-19 exerted on the emerging economy may be too severe for its central bank to ease. At last check, the Turkish lira /zigman2/quotes/210561870/realtime/sampled TRYUSD -0.0335% was off 0.8% against the dollar, changing hands at 7.2428. The currency has fallen 2.2% so far this week and 17.24% in the year to date against the greenback, FactSet data show. The currency breached a level in intraday action at 7.2362 that represents its lowest against the dollar since 2018, which had been its previous nadir. The country's finance minster, Berat Albayrak, son-in-law of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has insisted that the country will rebound and rejected a report from the International Monetary Fund that it is likely to fall into a deep economic recession, the Financial Times reported , citing people familiar. The Wall Street Journal reported that Turkey entered the pandemic already in a weakened state, with high inflation and anemic growth. Meanwhile, the exchange-traded iShares MSCI Turkey ETF /zigman2/quotes/205815187/composite TUR +0.46% , which gives investors exposure to the country, was down 2.2% this week so far and 30.2% thus far in 2020, according to FactSet data.


