An analysis of the performance of investment companies: Evidence from the İstanbul Stock Exchange


Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi, İşletme Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2010

Öğrenci: RUSTAM SULTANOV

Danışman: ZEHRA NURAY GÜNER

Özet:

The purpose of this master’s thesis is to evaluate the performance of investment companies, namely Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and Closed-End Funds (CEFs) in Turkey. In this study, three different models are used to evaluate the risk adjusted performances of Turkish investment companies. These models are: 1) the single-factor CAPM; 2) the Fama-French three-factor model; and 3) the Carhart’s four factor model. The results of this study indicate that for the sample period from January 1997 to December 2009, Turkish REITs and Turkish CEFs neither overperform nor underperform the overall market. Intercepts in almost all models are statistically significantly not different from zero, implying that both REITs and CEFs are earning their expected returns. The results are robust to different models used in this study. Among employed models, the Fama-French three-factor model is the best in explaining the returns on both REITs and CEFs. In general, coefficients of the size and the book-to-market equity risk factors are significant and positive. The explanatory power of the regressions does not improve with the Carhart’s four-factor model, since momentum factors have statistically insignificant coefficients in all regressions. Findings of this study have an important implication for the efficiency of the Istanbul Stock Exchange. The inability of professional money managers to beat the overall market could be taken as an evidence in favor of the ISE being either semi-strong or strong form efficient. On the other hand, lack of skills on the part of Turkish fund managers might be another explanation for their inability to surpass the performance of the overall market.