What Is Fund Return?

A fund's return is how much its unit share price changed between two dates, in percent: divide the ending price by the starting price, subtract 1, multiply by 100. A positive return reflects a gain, a negative one a loss. A return figure on its own is incomplete; what period it covers, and whether inflation has been stripped out of it, decide what the number actually says.

How return is calculated

The formula is one line:

Return (%) = (Ending price ÷ Starting price − 1) × 100

For mutual funds, "price" here means the unit share price: the value of a single share, found by dividing the fund's total value by the number of shares outstanding. If the price went from 10.00 to 11.50, the return is (11.50 ÷ 10.00 − 1) × 100 = 15%.

Under the CMB's Communiqué on Principles Regarding Investment Funds (III-52.1), the default rule is that a fund's unit share price is calculated and announced daily. The communiqué grants exceptions to certain fund types: for guaranteed and protection-oriented funds it is enough to calculate the share price at least twice a month, and for hedge (serbest) funds at least once a month. So not every fund has a new price every day.

Most funds in Türkiye keep their earnings inside the fund rather than distributing them as a dividend. Because the gain flows straight into the share price, the change in that price on its own represents the total return. That is why the price history published on TEFAS is sufficient data for a return calculation.

A return figure is incomplete until its period is stated

The phrase "40% return" says nothing until the period is stated. 40% earned in one month and 40% earned over five years are two entirely different events. Three points matter when reading the period:

• Cumulative or annual? Long-period returns are usually cumulative. "100% over 5 years" does not mean 100% per year; it means 100% in total across all five years. Converting it to an annual average is not a simple division — it takes compounding math.
• The start date. Return is highly sensitive to the period's starting date. Picking a trough day as the start pulls the number up; picking a peak day pulls it down. With the same fund and the same end date, a different start date produces a different return.
• Rolling periods. Year-to-date (YTD) return resets every 1 January: in January it measures a few days, in December almost a full year. Its length changes throughout the year.

When placing two funds side by side, the period must be the same. Two returns from different periods are not comparable; they are answers to two different questions.

Nominal return and real return

Nominal return is the numeric increase in the money: in lira, with inflation left out. It is generally the first figure shown on TEFAS and on fund pages.

Real return is the same return with inflation stripped out. It looks not at the count of the money but at the quantity of goods and services that money can buy.

In periods of high inflation, this distinction can flip the sign of the number. If the nominal return is positive but fell short of that same period's inflation, the result in purchasing-power terms is negative: the money in the account grew, but what that money buys shrank. A nominal gain can be a real loss.

The calculation uses the Fisher equation:

Real return = (1 + Nominal return) ÷ (1 + Inflation) − 1

Simply subtracting inflation from the nominal return gives only an approximation, and its error grows as inflation grows. The formula that divides is the correct one.

Which measure of inflation is used also changes the result:

• TÜFE — the official consumer price index calculated by TÜİK. Published monthly; annual inflation comes from the ratio of the current month's index to the same month a year earlier.
• ENAG — an index calculated independently by a group of academics. It is not an official measure and can give a different rate than TÜİK for the same period.
• Foreign currency or foreign inflation — converting the return to USD, or deflating it by US consumer inflation, separately answers the question "what did this money do in dollar terms?"

The same fund over the same period yields a different real return when a different base is chosen. That is not an inconsistency; each base measures a different question. The what-if calculator shows the nominal and real outcome of an amount placed in a fund between two dates separately, and in the fund list returns can be switched between these bases too.

Which deductions are already in the return

The unit share price is the value after the fund's expenses have been taken out. Expenses borne by the fund and stated in the prospectus, including the management fee, are met from the fund's assets and are reflected in the price (III-52.1, art. 33). So the published return is already net of these fund-level fees; there is no need to subtract them again.

The published return figure, however, does not include withholding tax. Tax on the gain arising from the sale of fund shares is calculated at the investor level at the moment of sale; its rate varies by fund type and by the legislation in force. Any purchase or sale commission applied on the platform side is likewise outside this figure.

What a past return measures

A past return is the measure of something that already happened: what the fund's price did between two specific dates. It is not a forecast, and there is no guarantee the same result will repeat in a future period; the CMB's own investor information materials state this plainly.

The reason is technical. A return was produced under a past period's market conditions, interest-rate environment, and the fund's asset allocation at that time. None of those are fixed. A past return is one data point for understanding what a fund did, and it is read together with the fund's risk measures, expense ratio, and strategy.