Pankaj Pandey, Head Research, ICICIdirect.com, says typically, any year, one could easily get 10-12% kind of a correction, and multiple corrections in the market. So 6% is already run, at max possibly 4-5% is very much possible. But Pandey thinks that the market ideally should bottom out at current levels. The second half is expected to be better because a lot of ordering, tendering should happen given the fact that H1 was quite soft. A lot of sectors in the second half are expected to do well. ICICIdirect is maintaining a target price of 27,500 for Nifty and about 15-16% CAGR growth in earnings for the next two years.
How are you looking at the overall earnings because that is a bit disconcerting? There is such a divergence from what the Street was pencilling in and the kind of commentary and the kind of results that a lot of companies have been putting out and also across-the-board, the slowdown seems to be quite evident. How much of a concern is that?
Pankaj Pandey: Overall, this was expected to be a softer quarter. We are already at peak margins of 19-20% for Nifty. So, incrementally margin expansion was definitely not the case. And we all know that in big sectors like IT, the demand is still soft and possibly Q4 is where some bit of a revival can be expected and obviously, we will have US elections impacting the sentiment as well and commodity prices continue to remain soft whether it is for steel, whether it is for cement.
The refining margins are definitely down because of the global slowdown. So, largely,