What Is Nominal Return?

Nominal return is the percentage change of an investment stated directly in its currency, with no adjustment for inflation. That is, it tells you how much the number in your account grew (or fell) in TL over a given period — not what that increase means in terms of purchasing power. If 100 lira becomes 130 lira by the end of the period, the nominal return is 30% — this is the raw, unprocessed figure. (All numbers here are for illustration only.)

What nominal return measures, and what it does not

Nominal return is the most basic and most commonly encountered form of return. It is calculated as the percentage difference between the start-of-period and end-of-period value:

Nominal return = (end-of-period value ÷ start-of-period value) − 1

This measure is clean and directly observable: you know the price, you compute the ratio. There is only one thing it does not measure, but that thing is critical — the change in the money's purchasing power. If prices are generally rising (that is, there is inflation), part of the nominal return is not a genuine gain but merely the reflection of the fact that you now need more lira to buy the same goods.

In other words, nominal return is not wrong; it is incomplete. It fully answers "how much did the number in my pocket grow," but stays silent on "can that number still buy as much as before." "Raw return" or simply "TL return" are common names for the same concept; all describe the change measured in the currency itself, with no inflation adjustment.

Why is a fund's published return nominal?

The return figures you see on TEFAS and on fund information cards — 1-month, 3-month, annual, year-to-date — are nominal. This is because the return is based on the change, in TL, of the fund's unit share value: the ratio between the unit price at the start of the period and at the end. That figure reflects the net value after fund expenses have been deducted, but it is not stripped of inflation.

This is a publication standard, not a flaw: nominal return is objective, single and the same for everyone. Real return, by contrast, shifts with the inflation gauge you choose, so it adds a layer of interpretation on top of the raw nominal figure. This site's approach is to show the nominal return as it is first, then optionally strip inflation out of it.

A positive nominal return can still be a loss

This is the most misunderstood point: a fund's nominal return can carry a plus sign while the investor has still grown poorer. When inflation is higher than the nominal return, the TL figure looks bigger, yet the amount of goods and services that money can buy falls.

For instance (illustration only): suppose the nominal return is 20% while inflation over the same period is 30%. The number has grown, but you can no longer buy the basket you bought a year ago with the same money. To make this gap visible, inflation is stripped out of the nominal return to compute the real return — and the correct method is not subtraction but division via the Fisher equation. The real-return page explains this calculation in detail.

Three lenses: nominal, real and currency-based

There is really only one TL return; you read it through three different questions:

Lens	What it answers	Gauge
Nominal	How much did it grow in TL?	Raw TL change
Real	How did my purchasing power actually change?	Inflation (CPI / ENAG)
Currency-based	What became of its value against hard currency?	USD/TRY rate

All three are different faces of the same investment. Nominal is the raw figure; real adjusts that figure against a consumption basket; currency-based converts the return into dollars to measure the change against the exchange rate. The same fund can look strongly positive in nominal terms while being far more modest — or even negative — against inflation or the dollar. This is not a contradiction but three separate answers to three separate questions.

Seeing nominal and adjusted return on the site

The return modes on this site represent exactly these lenses: the default view is the nominal TL return; optional modes re-express the same return against CPI (TÜFE), ENAG or its USD equivalent. To see how a given amount would have changed in a fund between two dates, in both nominal and real terms, use the calculator on the /fon-getiri-hesaplama page; to view different funds' nominal returns side by side, use the /fon-karsilastirma page. These pages give no recommendation; they only show the raw nominal figure and its inflation-adjusted form, leaving the interpretation to you.