Market-based financial literacy under macro-financial and political risk conditions: A rolling ARX–PCA proxy index for the BIST 100

This study develops a time-varying Market-Based Financial Literacy Proxy Index (MBFLPI) for Borsa İstanbul's BIST 100 index. The term financial literacy is retained in a restricted sense: MBFLPI is an indirect, outcome-based market proxy, not a direct score of investors' knowledge, skills, attitudes or behaviour. Using actual BIST sessions from 1 August 2013 to 30 January 2026, a 252-session rolling ARX relates USD-denominated returns to Türkiye's two-year government bond yield, conservatively lagged industrial production, the five-year sovereign CDS, and the VIX. It derives benchmark macro-financial alignment, low first-order return predictability and model-based residual stability; rolling PCA combines the diagnostics, and the composite is rescaled to 0–100 for ex post presentation. Sensitivity analysis varies the window, aggregation, calibration, return denomination and normalisation. Event movements are descriptive associations, not evidence of causal transmission. Published Türkiye evidence provides an external benchmark: pre-sample S&P and OECD/INFE–Capital Markets Board reports supply historical context, whereas fieldwork-matched TEB–Boğaziçi University and FODER–Visa Türkiye/Ipsos surveys and monthly Capital Markets Board investor statistics yield mixed or null evidence. The comparison does not support convergent validity. MBFLPI therefore remains a complementary market-level proxy rather than a substitute for survey-based financial literacy.