Is the Indian market always at a premium like a sea facing flat at Nariman Point? Hiren Ved answers

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Hiren Ved, Director & CIO, Alchemy Capital, says: “ From Covid, 31st March 2020 to December 2023. We have gone up 3.25x as a broad market and in that Covid shutdown, Covid recovery, wars, interest rate, oil prices, you name everything. If you take the total aggregate profits of the top 500 companies in March 2020 was about Rs 3,63,000 crore, roughly around Rs 4 lakh crore. In the first half this year, we did Rs 6.5 lakh crore. If I annualise it – usually the second half is better in India – we are talking about Rs 13 lakh crores. So, aggregate profits of the top 500 companies have gone from Rs 4 lakh crore to Rs 13 lakh crore, that is 3.75x.”

Ved also says: “Market cap growth in last three-and-a-half years reflects earnings power of India Inc.”
What a fantastic year it has been. You have been investing for so many years, more than two-and-a-half decades now. I think 2023 in a sense has been a record year of all sorts.
Hiren Ved: Yes, it does. 2022 was so tough, the smallcap index was down 14%, Nifty was up only 4% or 5%, so obviously when you come off a low base things look pretty good and the first quarter of this calendar year was not that great. We started Feb-March at a low and then from April we have seen a significant lift off. So, yes, I cannot complain. It has been a great year and I know there is this popular perception that people have that markets have run up very aggressively.

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