EMs & emerging market currencies will do better in 2025; TVS, Maruti doing better in auto: Sandip Sabharwal

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Sandip Sabharwal, asksandipsabharwal.com, says net-net, 2025 should be a reasonably good year overall because today the consensus trade is long dollar, long US equities, and the overweights on that are so excessive that normally and the consensus view is so drastic on that side, normally the reverse plays out and we could actually see emerging markets and emerging market currencies do better in 2025.

In auto, among two-wheelers, TVS has done better than expected, Hero MotoCorp has done less well. Maruti numbers seem to be pretty good and they are the ones who actually corrected the delay in inventories and the management said that we are back to normal last month. So, the positives seem to be from TVS and Maruti.
What do you make of the GDP slowdown because people are trying to find reasons around it as to whether one should look at the nominal number or if it is just manufacturing or a backward-looking data and all of that. What is your key takeaway on consumption right now?
Sandip Sabharwal: GDP data, whenever it is released, is obviously backward-looking because the reports of the companies have already come in. So, the second quarter results in general were disappointing and those by themselves reflected a growth slowdown. All of us knew that there was a growth slowdown. It was just RBI, which was maintaining a very high forecast of growth, which looked very improbable. So, that reporting has come in.

Now, the second half will be much better given festive demand, marriage season demand, delayed harvest and