Risk and return analysis of mutual funds: The case of Turkey

In the scope of the latest regulations of pertaining to the overall capital markets, especially mutual funds, the access of savers to the mutual funds' participation certificates are provided only by single platform. In this context, it has become possible to use mutual funds in a wider range in assessing savings. This change has made it necessary for the savers to choose the mutual funds; likewise, it also has increased the importance of choices. The research topic has been chosen with this necessity and its increased importance. In our study, we have used fifteen stock intensive fund's weekly closing prices in 2016 and evaluated their performances separately according to the different types of funds. In addition, fifteen Turkish stock intensive fund operating in 2016 data have also been used. Here, it was determined whether the performance of the mutual funds was successful against BIST 100 or not. During the evaluation of performance, Average return, Sharpe ratio, M2, Sortino ratio, Treynor ratio, T2 and Jensen Alpha criterion have been used. In the first section, capital markets and mutual funds are generally introduced; alongside, historical process of mutual funds, advantages and types of mutual funds are also introduced. The criteria used in the selection of investment funds have been discussed in the second section, and finally, in the last section, the analysis's results for the performance of selected investment funds in Turkey have been presented.