The big question continues on whether the trend is firmly up and has been rediscovered or is the market going to falter once again. This a critical juncture to ask this question—the union budget is behind us—but the global markets for the first time in the last two to three months are showing signs of a lot of edginess. Commodity and global equity markets seem uncertain, which is why this question comes to the fore once again: are we headed for a big dip or is this merely a retracement of that massive three-month rally that we have seen in global equities?

Also Read: Mkts may see 10-15% upside over six months: Dipan Mehta

Answering this question, Punita Kumar Sinha, a long-time India investor and Senior Managing Director of The Blackstone Group, said all markets to be slightly range-bound at the moment or maybe a little bit positive or negative. She however added, “[Even though] we are entering summer months and we are having slow signs of economic recovery, risk aversion is not going back to last year levels, unless we have some really bad data.”

“If some other really financial catastrophe happens in the future, which I am not anticipating just yet, but barring that and knowing the information that we know today, I am not expecting the retest of the March lows anytime soon,” Sinha added.

Here is a verbatim transcript of the exclusive interview with Punita Kumar Sinha on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

Q: We won’t talk much about the budget because that event is behind us but do you think the impact of the budget was played out on the day with that 5% fall or is there any lingering impact on the stock market going forward you reckon?

A: It is being priced in. What is impacting the markets now is what is happening globally. Thus, unfortunately, the rebound, if there was any, was muted because the global markets have been quite weak during the same period as well.

Q: Do you think that the global investors have any sense of lingering disappointment? Do think they have come to terms with the scare on the budget day on the fiscal deficit front and the fact that disinvestment did not get a mentioned?

A: Foreign investors were a bit disappointed initially because they were expecting a big-bang budget after the way the election results had played out and there was a lot more hope built in to this budget. Now, I think, the view is that it is neither that negative nor that positive for the stock markets. However, over the course of the year, we are hopefully going to see more announcements that will be giving in incrementally positive news. So the hopes have not been dashed completely because the government, in its budget, did not come up with anything that negative, which would suggest that they won’t do some of the divestments.

Q: We will talk about India in a bit, but before that, let me ask you about global markets and how you are feeling about it because the last few days have been quite wobbly globally—commodities have corrected quite a bit, global equities have started pulling back—do you think its just an overdue correction or the start of something more meaningful by way of dip in global markets?

A: It is very early to say because the data is much better than it was last year when the correction was happening. But there is still some negative economic data that keeps coming up and there is fear that the economic recovery may be delayed.

Q: But has confidence been dented globally, there was a big rebuilding of confidence over the last three months, do you think that is on the ebb once again with what is going on with data points over the last week or 10 days?

A: I would say that the confidence is mixed because unemployment is quite high and new job creation is pretty low. As a result of that consumer confidence remains weak. But if you look at selective data, there are improvements in certain housing markets and there is little improvement in credit markets, so of course there is some economic recovery but it is not yet significant or material enough for the people to feel confident.

Continued on page 2…