Currency dealers estimated that the central bank sold around $100 million in an early bout of intervention, having already sold between $4-4.5 billion through direct intervention since last Friday. By 0920 the lira stood at 1.8665 to the dollar, compared with 1.8765 late Tuesday. The lira reached 1.8612 during the intervention, before settling back. "The central bank is playing a very risky game given that its forex reserves are just about adequate in case of European credit crunch, based on two out of three most commonly used indicators," wrote Piotr Matys and Anisha Arora from 4Cast. "Hence at some stage the central bank will have to let the lira go if pressure prevails and forex reserves fall to inadequate levels." They said that with the central bank continuing to intervene for now, a lira recovery to 1.85 could coume into focus. The lira weakened nearly 22 percent versus the dollar in 2011, adding to inflationary pressures, and on Dec. 28 hit its weakest ever level of 1.9215 against the greenback. Against its euro-dollar basket, the lira strengthened as much as 2.1463, from 2.1597 early in the morning and compared with 2.1595 in late trade on Tuesday. Central Bank Governor Erdem Basci said last week the bank would hold intraday repo auctions and may sell foreign currency directly on "exceptional days", without specifying what would make a day exceptional. The Turkish Central Bank did not hold a fixed-rate, one-week repo auction on Wednesday, but instead announced an intraday repo auction with a volume of 3 billion Turkish lira ($1.6 billion), bank data showed. The yield on Turkey's benchmark bond maturing on Dec. 4, 2013 stood at 11.45 percent compared with a previous close of 11.53 percent. The benchmark yield declined as much as to 11.36 percent during intraday trade. "As banks' liquidity needs are currently lower after the balance sheet period and the lira recovered due to central bank intervention, we saw yields declining. There are some foreign investors who also buy bonds following the recovery of global sentiment," said a treasury marketing unit manager of a big local bank. "However, a permanent decline of bond yields looks difficult under current tight liquidity conditions," he added. Istanbul's main stock index was down 0.9 percent at 52,383 points, underperforming the MSCI emerging markets index , which was down 0.23 percent. "For the day ahead, we expect Turkish stocks to give away some of yesterday's gain," wrote analysts of Alkhair Capital.