Q: There has been a broader definition of retail as well though for a large part, e also saw money interest coming in from the Far East from markets like Korea and Japan, largely from the retail investor community. What is the sentiment over there because in dollar terms, this market is perhaps the worst performer, second to China? 

A: There is a lot of valid concern around the performance of India in the short-term and this has been emanating from across Asia and whether it is Japanese, Hong Kong, Korean or elsewhere, investors we are getting to see a lot of concern, which has been building up around the short-term performance of India. The concerns around inflation, interest rates and the political situation in India have been worrying investor. So they have not started to take the money off the table. That has not started to happen. But there are concerns and therefore there is a lot of serious explanation, which everybody would now have to get into.  

Q: Do you think this will pass as a cyclical bear phase, which is the consensus opinion right now - that it is a bearish phase but cyclical in nature or there is a risk of-even an outside risk- that this is something slightly bigger than that given our macro environment and how swiftly it has worsened? Could this turn out to be a bit more of a structural kind of bear phase? 

A: If we have to compare India and China, the way the Chinese markets have fallen India had a bit of catching up to do. Currently with the markets having come off significantly, we believe that we are somewhere close to where the bottom could be though markets are going to remain volatile. So it is going to be a phenomenon, which probably is going to last for eight months to twelve months period. Thereafter we would get to see a pullback starting to happen in the market with current levels at about 13,000-13,500 levels and with markets trading at about 13 times, if you take into account the embedded value then it is ten times. So clearly the valuations are kind of extremely attractive and so it is just a matter of time before we see renewed interest and re-pricing of risk starting to happen for emerging market and for India as well.  

Q: We are going to get into earnings very soon, at this point what sector would you increase exposure most to? 

A: We have seen a fair amount of sector rotation from the beginning of this calendar year; of course in the last month or so it has been a bit subdued. People have been trying to take cover under healthcare, IT and couple of other sectors like FMCG, which has been the favoured sector to take shelter under the market conditions. Having said that, the interest rate sensitive sectors are all going to stay under pressure for a period of eight months to one year, at least.