Infosys guidance will decide move for IT stocks

CNBC-TV18’s Executive Editor, Udayan Mukherjee - IT has actually been looking very good for the last few weeks. They have been relatively strong. If you just map the market and clusters of stocks I think the two sectors, which have stood out are FMCG and IT. Pharma is too smaller sector and it does not contribute much to market sentiment but FMCG has been a stand out and IT has looked pretty okay.

Yesterday’s two events more than all these ICAI stuff which the market might have been nervous about yesterday, I think it might affect some of the midcap technology companies. I doubt if Infosys and TCS will have big blow ups to report because of derivatives losses or anything like that. They are quite prudent in terms of accounting.

So the two concerns are: one is the rupee and to what extent the rupee is led to appreciate because of inflation concerns. If the market gets a sense, it is only 39.50 per dollar and beyond that the RBI will step in; that fear might get arrested for the moment. But the bigger thing I think is still coming up in two weeks time with the Infosys guidance. If the market gets a sense that we are still okay for 20% kind of growth next year, I suspect we will see strength in IT because that sector has been showing signs of trying or wanting to move up.

So yesterday was a reaction and that too to ICAI and the rupee but on the April 15 you will get a clear sense of whether in the near-term, next six months to one year you should expect outperformance from IT or underperformance.