Mkt valuations at 15x; investors awaiting Q4 Nos: ABN Amro

Q3: What’s your take on the private banking universe? Those stocks have also corrected quite a bit in this fall. Are you worried about what may come through in terms of special provisions that need to be made or do you see this dip as a buying opportunity?

That has to be viewed more in line with what is happening with the banking and financials broadly as a sector across the world. To our mind today it is more of a crisis of confidence and that is perhaps what Fed has tried to address.

Q4: What is it that you see is going to happen in markets in the next few months?

A: My guess is that markets would wait for the March quarter for numbers. We will have FY08 with us when we come to April-May. So that’s something that will probably give a reassurance that the growth is very much on track. Even if we look at 8% growth for the Indian economy for 2009, it seems to be a fairly good risk-reward equation from this point onwards, because valuations have come back to 15 times in terms of earnings. Today we are looking at a market which perhaps gives you 18%-20% earnings growth, fairly led by domestic consumption. So that’s when people will start taking bets again. So maybe we have to look at what happens in terms of numbers that come out for the March quarter and FY09 in general.