Capital Markets Board of Turkey (“CMB” or “Board”) decided to end the ban on short sales transactions taking place in the BIST-50 Index equity market of Istanbul Stock Exchange (“BIST”). This decision (“Decision”) has been announced in CMB's Weekly Bulletin No. 2021/7 on 11 February 2021 and the short selling ban for the top 50 shares on BIST (BIST-50 Index) has been lifted as of 12 February 2021.
Board has initially lifted the ban on the short sale transactions taking place only in the BIST-30 Index equity market of Istanbul Stock Exchange (Borsa Istanbul) with its decision No. 39/798 dated 30 June 2020. With the recent Board Decision, Board has released the ban on short selling transactions further again. With the same Decision, CMB has decided to inform the investors and investment institutions trading in BIST-50 Index equity market that it is mandatory to click the short sell button for the positions that are opened with respect to the sale of capital market instruments that are not actually owned and closed within the same trading day in accordance with Articles 24 and 28 of Communiqué on Margin Trading, Short Sales and Lending and Borrowing of Securities (Serial V, No: 65). Considering the above, the short selling ban for the stocks other than BIST-30 and BIST-50 Index of equity market remains in accordance with CMB's prior decisions1 regarding the short sale ban.
The release of this restrictive measure is expected to have a positive impact on professional investors and also, increase the foreign investor interest in stock market.
Footnotes
1 The short sale transactions in the equity market of Turkey, save for BIST-30 and BIST-50 Indexes, were banned respectively on 28.02.2020, 02.03.2020 and 30.06.2020.
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