Weekly dossier: Mark Mobius, Raamdeo Agrawal, Shankar Sharma, Ridham Desai and others on markets, economy

The Indian market logged strong weeks in the week gone by with key indices Sensex and Nifty rising about 4 percent.

Banking and financial stocks witnessed a lot of traction during the week which indicates that they are not ready to lose their leadership to sectors like IT and Pharma.

With US elections over, a vaccine in the sight, healthy Q2 earnings and improving indicators of the economy, it appears the market has a lot to cheer. However, negative news flows regarding COVID-19 remains an overhang.

The market looks attractive but may be ripe for a healthy consolidation.

Top voices express their views on the market trend, pockets of opportunities and the economy. Take a look:

Mark Mobius, Founder of Mobius Capital Partners (to CNBC-TV18)

We have been pleased with the performance of the shares that we have in India and as a result, the weightage in our portfolio is the biggest for India. We have been focusing more on the infrastructure in India and also on the technology side. What we are doing is not necessarily focusing on the internet or telecoms but we are focusing on the nuts and bolts of technology.

Telecom is the backbone of a lot of things we are doing. We have to look at telecoms but telecoms are quite heavily regulated. So we look at those areas that are related to telecoms such as software and hardware but are not necessarily regulated. That means anything related to the cloud and that sort of thing.

Raamdeo Agrawal, Chairman, Motilal Oswal Financial Services (to CNBC-TV18)

The portfolios are already positioned for recovery. I don’t think there is a vaccine trend today. Working from home or from anywhere, I think it has changed the way the world works.

I wouldn’t rule out IT as a continuing growth story but other things like pharma and all, where a bit of COVID impact was there, I think it will be very difficult for them to maintain the margins or the sales growth.

There could be some profit-taking there. There is a good pick up in the activity in the real estate. I am not looking at any stocks particularly but maybe we will play it through cement, steel or something else which might be a proxy to the construction sector.

Shankar Sharma, Vice-Chairman and Joint MD, First Global (to CNBC-TV18)

The market is up about 6-7 percent. The Bank Nifty is around 35-40 percent of the Nifty. So almost the entire move, in fact a little bit more than the entire move of the Nifty in the last 30-40 days is attributed only by one industry, which is banks.

Emerging markets (EMs) have started to outperform after 10 years. EMs were the forgotten equity class in the last 10 years. I think that is changing gradually in front of our eyes.

Ridham Desai, Head of India Equity Research & India Equity Strategist, Morgan Stanley (to CNBC-TV18)

We have seen concentration at high levels in the market now for a while. We see an acceleration in growth and as growth accelerates, smaller firms do better.

We think the economy is heading for better times in the next couple of years and if that is happening then the broad market outperforms the narrow market going into 2021.

Sandeep Bhatia, Head of Cash Equities, India, Commodities and Global Markets at Macquarie Group (to CNBC-TV18)

I would expect a widening and broadening of the market performance. For the first time we are seeing an earnings upgrade cycle across the board in India, more importantly, that should continue for the next 2-3 years.

If that happens, then the entire widening and broadening of the market which I am hoping for will definitely come through.

Sushil Kedia Founder of Kedianomics (to CNBC-TV18)

This market peaked out at 11,800 in September 2018. However since then, we have made several higher highs but those are irregular B-wave patterns which indicate that there will be substantially larger up moves further over the next 5 years but in between, the kind of hara-kiri that we saw in the first of 2020, I am unable to rule out a repeat of that, at least getting down to something like 8,000 also going forward over the next 6 months.

Dipan Mehta, Founder Director at Elixir Equities (to CNBC-TV18)

The next 2-3 years could be phenomenal, we have seen subdued earnings growth for the past several years or so.

I have a gut feel that maybe the next few years will be excellent for equity markets and this is a good time to enter into stocks.

You could always time it by spreading out your purchases but this is not the time to start booking profit at least.

The best ideas that we can come up with at this point in time within the banking space, we liked the numbers which came from IDFC First Bank.

There are some digital ideas also but companies like Affle India, IndiaMART InterMESH, Route Mobile, I think these are stocks that investors can certainly keep their toes in.

Gurmeet Chadha, co-founder and CEO of Complete Circle Consultants (to CNBC-TV18)

My sense is some consolidation can happen and should happen.

We have seen a sharp run-up, we are seeing some rotation also from pharmaceutical, IT and COVID themes to some value and non-COVID depressing themes.

Banking and financials have been one of the beneficiaries of this move. So some consolidation will happen. I think a lot of positives are getting priced in.

Mahesh Nandurkar of Jefferies (to CNBC-TV18)

I continue to believe that there is still more upside risk than downside risk in my view if we take a 12-month view because the global liquidity which has driven down the risk-free rates globally and also in India, are here to stay.

The economic recovery has been surprising positively and the biggest positive factor is that all the recovery has happened without any government support as such.

It is private sector driven and therefore more sustainable. So I would still continue to take a positive view of the market.

Almost 80 percent of the companies that we cover have seen earnings upgrades for the current year and also for the next financial year.

Given the low base, we are looking at somewhere between 35 percent and 40 percent earnings growth for FY22.

Ajay Srivastava, CEO, Dimensions Corporate Finance Services (to CNBC-TV18)

HFCs are facing a phenomenal time, a bumper time. The surprise has been the HFCs, they have done tremendously well.

Consumer space has, however, disappointed us. We thought there the buying and the margins should have been better but those have shown us a staggering loss of momentum.

For the pharmaceutical sector, don’t think twice before buying. It is just the beginning. Only US-facing pharma companies are facing problems in the US market.

Kenneth Fisher, Founder & Chairman, Fisher Investments (to CNBC-TV18)

When you look at India as a country, if you patch together EM and the US smallcap value market, they are the almost perfect images of the Indian market and that correlation is at 98 percent.

So that is saying that India is partly EM and partly small-cap like US market value.

As we are a little underweight on value, we are going to be optimistic about India but a little underweight compared to some of the other parts of emerging markets.

Harsha Upadhyaya, CIO Equity, Kotak Mutual Fund (to CNBC-TV18)

I believe that markets are being driven by fundamentals as well as higher liquidity. However, I now expect the market to enter a consolidation phase around current levels.

The PLI scheme is a continuation of the focus on self-reliant India or Make in India theme. The PLI scheme can promote India as a manufacturing hub for global trade.

Disclaimer: The above report is compiled from information available on public platforms. Moneycontrol advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions.