Still not comfortable being overweight on India: Barclays

Barclays Wealth is concerned about inflation in emerging markets and the likelihood of potentially tighter monetary policy announcements going ahead, said Manpreet Gill, Barclays Wealth's Asia Strategist. Barclays is still not comfortable being "overweight" on India, but, however, is positive on Korea and Taiwan among key Asian markets.

Gill also expressed concern over the rapid rise of crude, and said it will negatively impact both emerging and developed markets. Brent Crude is currently hovering at USD 115 per barrel. "The main focus of a lot of investors today has been the likelihood of a continued recovery in the large part of developed world, most of the US and if we do see a substantial rise in the average price of oil, that does begin to directly impact consumer spending in the developed world, so that is definitely a risk," Gill said.

The current political crises in West Asia and North African countries like Libya, which has fuelled the surge in crude prices, has rattled investors sentiment, he said. Although the risks currently are limited to countries, which are not major oil producers, investors are worried that the crises could spread to significant oil producing countries. "Everyone does have that eye very strongly on the what-if scenario; the what-if this does spread to more significant oil producers and leads to a wider disruption. At least this is beginning to become a risk that one would consider in terms of portfolio hedges, but not something that is a central scenario at the moment," Gill said.