Pusula Portföy’s Equity and Money Market Funds: What Three Sessions Showed
Between the close of 31 August and the close of 3 September 2026, two funds run by the same Turkish asset manager lost roughly a fifth and a quarter of their value. Over the same three trading sessions the BIST 100, Istanbul’s main equity index, fell 2.8%. Two money market funds from the same manager went up.
That spread — same manager, same three days, wildly different outcomes — is what makes this worth writing about. It is not a story about a bad week in Turkish equities. It is a story about what sits inside a fund, and it is visible entirely in public data.
What the prices did
All fund prices below are TEFAS closing prices. TEFAS is Turkey’s electronic fund platform; practically every mutual fund sold to the public in Turkey publishes its daily unit price there.
| Fund | Category | 31 Aug | 3 Sep | 3 sessions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PBR | Variable | 4.777442 | 3.478615 | −27.2% |
| PHE | Equity | 4.106306 | 3.230415 | −21.3% |
| PUK | Equity (participation) | 1.326588 | 1.212106 | −8.6% |
| PKD | Hedge (participation) | 0.981713 | 0.948498 | −3.4% |
| PRY | Money market | 3.211599 | 3.224920 | +0.4% |
| PNU | Money market | 1.252351 | 1.257160 | +0.4% |
| BIST 100 | Index | 14,334.06 | 13,932.46 | −2.8% |
On 3 September alone, PBR fell 15.4% and PHE fell 11.6%. For comparison, seven of the largest equity funds run by other managers moved between −0.6% and −3.5% over the same three sessions. Whatever happened, it did not happen to Turkish equities as an asset class.
Where the money went
A fund’s unit price and a fund’s size are two different measurements, and here they diverge sharply. Size falls both when prices fall and when investors redeem, and the two can be separated: daily net flow data shows how much cash actually left.
| Fund | Peak size (2026) | Size, 3 Sep | Net flow, Aug | Net flow, 1–3 Sep |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PHE | ₺75.9bn (July) | ₺19.4bn | −₺37.1bn | −₺4.0bn |
| PBR | ₺39.3bn (July) | ₺2.8bn | −₺27.0bn | −₺1.5bn |
| PRY | ₺124.3bn (July) | ₺100.1bn | −₺7.9bn | −₺13.1bn |
| PNU | ₺38.3bn (Aug) | ₺34.9bn | +₺12.0bn | −₺5.6bn |
Both equity-heavy funds were built almost from scratch this year — PHE held ₺60m in January — peaked in July, and gave most of it back in six weeks. PHE’s investor count fell from 153,264 in mid-July to 109,057 on 3 September. PBR’s went from a July peak above 72,000 to 30,139.
The money market funds are a different case. Their unit prices never broke; what they show is redemption. PRY lost more cash in the first three sessions of September than in all of August, and PNU, which was still taking money in during August, reversed. Investors appear to be stepping back from the manager, not from the asset class.
What was inside the equity funds
TEFAS publishes an asset-class breakdown. As of 2 August, PHE was 76.3% listed equity and 21.1% units of other funds; PBR was 70.5% equity and 19.5% fund units. Those two numbers matter in different ways. The equity share is what the price tracks. The fund-unit share is a look-through gap: TEFAS tells you the money is in other funds, not which ones, so a fifth of the portfolio is not visible at this level at all.
For the equity part there is better disclosure. Turkish funds file monthly portfolio reports to KAP, the public disclosure platform, and those name individual holdings. The July reports show both funds in the same handful of names:
| Holding | PHE weight | PBR weight |
|---|---|---|
| ODINE | 14.50% | 14.37% |
| PASEU | 11.91% | 7.94% |
| GUNDG | 10.17% | 9.95% |
| KTLEV | 9.48% | 9.31% |
| HEDEF | 8.00% | 15.85% |
| Top five | 54.1% | 57.4% |
Over half of each fund sat in five stocks, and they were largely the same five. Here is what those stocks did over the same three sessions:
| Stock | 31 Aug → 3 Sep | From its 2026 high |
|---|---|---|
| PASEU | −27.1% | −34.4% |
| ODINE | −27.1% | −55.7% |
| HEDEF | −27.0% | −83.2% |
| KTLEV | −26.8% | −76.8% |
| GUNDG | −16.3% | −47.0% |
Four of those figures cluster at about −27%, which is not a coincidence: Borsa İstanbul caps a single session’s fall at 10%, and three consecutive limit-down sessions compound to −27.1%. The funds fell because their largest positions fell as far as the exchange’s rules allow, three days running. KAP circuit-breaker notices confirm the mechanics — repeated single-stock halts in KTLEV, HEDEF, ODINE and PASEU across 28 August to 3 September.
The part that explains the size of the move
Concentration alone does not usually produce this. The additional element is ownership share. When a fund’s holding crosses certain thresholds of a company’s capital, the manager must disclose its dealings, and those filings are public. Recent notifications from this manager, aggregated across the funds it runs, disclose:
- 38.67% of GUNDG’s capital (18 August)
- 32.95% of IZFAS (20 August)
- 26.95% of TMPOL, cut to 22.02% (29 July)
- 19.96% of BALSU on 1 July, sold down through 10.66% and 8.59% to 1.84% by 18 August
This is the structural point, and it is worth stating plainly because it is general, not specific to one manager. A fund that owns a third of a small listed company cannot sell that position the way it can sell a large-cap holding. There is no buyer on the other side at scale. When redemptions arrive, the fund must sell into a market where its own selling is most of the volume — and the price it receives on the way out is worse the more it needs to sell. Several of these names were also under Borsa İstanbul’s volatility-based measures during August, which restrict margin buying and short selling and, for GUNDG, imposed gross settlement — all of which further thins the pool of buyers.
The August flow data and the August share-dealing filings are the same event seen from two sides: ₺37bn of redemptions from one fund, and a manager reducing 20% and 12% stakes in illiquid names.
Why the returns looked so good beforehand
None of this was hidden, but the headline numbers pointed the other way. Measured over the twelve months to 3 September — that is, including the crash — PHE was still up 164.95%, against 30.85% for the BIST 100 and a 33.49% average for Turkish equity umbrella funds. TEFAS still ranked it first of 199 funds in its category on that day.
The money market funds show a milder version of the same pattern. PRY returned 59.81% over one year, third-best of 118 money market funds, against a category average of 46.79%, a deposit-rate benchmark of 40.01% and inflation of 31.50%. Its published composition looks conventional for the category — 56.2% reverse repo, 20.3% exchange money market, 10.0% government bonds, 8.3% TL time deposits as of 2 August. A money market fund’s return is bounded by short-term rates, so a 13-point gap over the category average is the kind of thing worth understanding rather than admiring; the place to look is the fund’s own performance presentation report on KAP.
What the data does not say is why. Public data shows what a fund held, what it disclosed, what the prices did and what investors did. It does not show intent, and nothing above should be read as an allegation about anyone’s conduct.
Five things this data lets anyone check
The general lesson is not about one manager. It is that a fund’s top-line return is the least informative number on its page, and the informative ones are all published:
- Concentration. The monthly KAP portfolio report gives holding-level weights. If the top five names are more than half the fund, the fund is those five names.
- Liquidity of the holdings. Not the fund’s size — the daily traded value of what it owns. A large fund holding small illiquid stocks is a different instrument from a large fund holding index names.
- Ownership share. Share-dealing notifications reveal when a fund complex owns a fifth or a third of a company. That is a position it cannot exit at the quoted price.
- Flows against returns. Size falling much faster than price means redemptions, and redemptions in an illiquid portfolio force selling. This is usually the earliest visible signal.
- The peer comparison, in the same category. A return far above every comparable fund is information about the portfolio, not just about the manager’s skill.
You can run the first, fourth and fifth of these on any fund on this site: see the equity fund category, the money market fund category, or this manager’s full fund list.
Data note
Fund unit prices, category rankings, asset-class breakdowns and one-year benchmark returns: TEFAS, retrieved 3 September 2026. Fund size, investor count and daily net flows, and index and stock closes: BIST/market data, through the 3 September close. Holding-level weights: the July 2026 KAP portfolio reports. Ownership percentages: the manager’s own KAP share-dealing notifications, on the dates given. Volatility-based measures and circuit-breaker notices: Borsa İstanbul via KAP. Every figure is a measurement on a stated date and will not hold; the fund pages linked above update daily.