Equities could partly drive rally, but hold on to gold and silver, says Radhika Gupta of Edelweiss MF

The key is not prediction, but preparation, Gupta told Mint in an interview. “That’s why you hold gold or silver allocations: not to time them, but because you can’t.”The biggest risk remains macro concerns, she said, adding that trade deals, both for India and globally, are critical.
If they don’t materialise, the environment could turn inflationary, something already visible in early signs from the US,” she said. “If India’s trade deal isn’t concluded by March, conditions could get tougher.”Another key risk is a lack of earnings revival, Gupta pointed out.

Markets have shown resilience, driven by the hope that earnings will recover in the second half, she said.Edited excerpts:There wasn’t much outcome on the Nifty in 2025—an ordinary year marked by a lot of extraordinary drama. It feels like there was a lot to digest. From an investor’s perspective, one would probably say that from an equity market point of view, it was obviously not the best of years, but not a terrible one either.Equity investing has bad, good and middling years, and this was a middling one.

The benchmark indices were largely flat to slightly negative. Of course, investor portfolios, especially those with direct stock exposure, may have been hit much harder. But from an index perspective, it was a fairly normal year, albeit with a lot of drama: macro headwinds, uncertainty over which way things would move, not much bottom-up activity, and a lot of news-driven action.A sector could be a hero one month and, because of a tweet, be in the doldrums the next.

Geopolitical conflicts continued, along with uncertainty around trade deals. Overall, it was a bit of a cinematic year–full of drama.The real all-weather theme is asset allocation. Last year saw a