The relationship between financial performances and exchange returns of the food, pharmaceutical and retail trade sectors in Borsa Istanbul

The subject of investment has always been a very important subject from past to present. There have been negative economic developments in Turkey in recent years, mainly due to Covid 19, inflation and negative movements in foreign exchange. In this case, it has become an important issue in which sectors and companies to invest. In this study, especially the food, pharmaceutical and retail trade sectors, which are less affected by negative economic effects, are discussed. It was investigated which of the 17 companies traded in BIST between 2017-2021 were more financially successful and which were unsuccessful. TOPSIS and Gray Relational analysis methods, which are among the MCDM methods, were used to investigate the financial performances of the companies, and the Entropy method was used for weighting. In addition, the relationship between the financial performance of companies and their stock market returns was also investigated in this study. The TOPSIS results of this study showed that the most financially successful companies were ULKER and BANVT in the food sector, RTALB in the pharmaceutical sector, and CRFSA and SOKM in the retail sector, while the GIA results showed that the most financially successful companies were TATGD in the food sector, RTALB in the pharmaceutical sector and MGROS in the retail sector. When the entropy method is used, TOPSIS results showed that the most successful companies financially were TATGD in the food sector, RTALB in the pharmaceutical sector and SELEC in the retail sector, while the GIA results showed that the most successful companies were KENT and TATGD in the food sector, RTALB in the pharmaceutical sector and SELEC in the retail sector. Finally, some statistically significant results were obtained between stock returns and TOPSIS-GIA scores and financial ratios.