Finance Brief: Oil whipsaws on Hormuz news while Turkish inflation cools slowly and Central Asia rewrites its money rules
Finance Brief: Oil whipsaws on Hormuz news while Turkish inflation cools slowly and Central Asia rewrites its money rules
Oil spent the week swinging on news from the Strait of Hormuz, and that swing is now feeding straight into fuel and energy costs across the region. At the same time, Türkiye's inflation is cooling but still painfully high, while Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are changing how ordinary savers handle their money.
Brent crude closed Monday at 104.77 dollars a barrel, down 7.63 percent on hopes for talks, then traded back above 106 dollars on Tuesday morning after reports of American strikes on Qeshm Island. Gold sat around 3,930 dollars an ounce on Tuesday morning, after rebounding to 3,954 dollars on Monday. Türkiye's BIST 100 index stood at 10,961.67 in Tuesday's market table, after closing Monday 1.9 percent higher, and the lira traded near 49.98 to the dollar, with the euro around 56.00 lira.
Türkiye's October inflation came in at 2.58 percent on the month and 29.77 percent on the year. That is cooling, but not cool: households still face prices rising at nearly a third a year, and the central bank's next decision, on December 10, will be read as a test of whether the slowdown is real.
The day's biggest corporate story is also Turkish. Anadolu Group and Vestel have agreed to sell their 23 percent stakes each in electric carmaker Togg, for 184 million euros apiece, to the Türkiye Wealth Fund and Turkcell. The Wealth Fund takes 35 percent in total and becomes the largest shareholder, while Turkcell rises to 34 percent. Vestel will use at least 90 percent of its proceeds to repay overdue bank loans within 30 days. Togg sold 44,187 cars in Türkiye through October 2026, up 60.8 percent from a year earlier, but it remains loss-making, with a 14.6 billion lira loss in 2025.
Uzbekistan's money picture is unusually strong on the surface. Households sold 18.9 billion dollars of foreign currency to banks in the first nine months of 2026 and bought 11 billion, a surplus of 7.9 billion dollars. Foreign digital firms paid 232.8 billion soums in tax over the same period, up 85 percent, with Apple paying the most. But households also face a sharp bill: liquefied gas rises from 2,000 to 5,000 soums per kilogram on November 15, with compensation for vulnerable families capped at 60,000 soums a month.
Kazakhstan is giving savers more control. Pension contributors can now spread their savings across up to three investment portfolios and hand up to 100 percent of their savings to private managers. The grain harvest, at 24.3 million tonnes, is one of the best in 15 years, and oil output rose 11.8 percent in 2025 to 2.1 million barrels a day, according to Eni figures carried by Trend.
Levels to watch: Brent holding above 106 dollars or slipping back toward 103, the lira's 50.00 line against the dollar, and the BIST 100's 11,000 resistance. If Hormuz shipping stays open, the oil spike fades and the inflation story takes over again. If it does not, energy costs rewrite every other story in this post.
Information only, not financial advice.
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