Can insurance companies rally this year or should underperformers be avoided? Devang Mehta answers

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Devang Mehta, Director — Equity Advisory, Spark Private Wealth, says “markets are slaves of earnings. Earnings have started on a good note, more so the last quarter was also good. We are seeing margin expansion and market leaders coming back to the fore. A lot of companies like Reliance, a lot of IT participants which are huge overweights on the indices, all this confluence of factors, plus the foreign investors are still as such are still missing. Ideally, I would not get carried away by index targets. I would be more delighted if this is an earnings led rally, rather than being a rally of everything and anything or laggards doing well.”

The buzz is that the Nifty will definitely cross 24,000 in 2024. Can you see that as a possibility or is that expecting too much?
Devang Mehta: We probably saw 20,000, 21,000, 22,000 all coming too soon. It took the market 25 sessions to go from 21,000 to 22,000. So, it is very possible. Ideally, why? I do not want to put a figure to the index right now, but yes, if you ask me, there are a confluence of factors, be it macros, be it global macros, be it local macros, be it micros, sentiment towards equities as an asset class is great.

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The markets are slaves of earnings. Earnings have started on a good note, more so the last quarter was also good. I think we are seeing margin expansion. We are seeing market leaders coming back to the fore. A lot of companies like Reliance, a lot of IT participants which are huge overweights on the indices,