Markets could remain range-bound over the coming year: Ashi Anand

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

«I think clearly the biggest driver is the fact that inflation and interest rates have clearly peaked. You have seen the RBI pausing and this was one of the biggest headwinds for the market over the last many-many months,» says Ashi Anand, Valcreate Investment.Just wanted to understand your overall thought on the market right now. While FII inflows have been intact for us, a lot of sectoral churn at play but a lot of overvalued pockets as well?Broadly in terms of the markets, we have seen a fairly good rally in the midst of kind of a fair amount of concerns globally.

You have got global headwinds in terms of economic growth. Valuations are a bit high. Mid and small caps are a bit expensive.

Consumption has also been relatively weak. Now, what has been driving this rally? I think clearly the biggest driver is the fact that inflation and interest rates have clearly peaked. You have seen the RBI pausing and this was one of the biggest headwinds for the market over the last many-many months.

So with that kind of coming down and importantly fund flows having turned positive. Last year, you had almost $17 billion outflows in terms of FIIs. This has shifted to $4.4 billion positive in the current year.

This is kind of driven by, if you are just looking at India from a global context, you are really seeing India really starting to outshine other global markets. China clearly has its areas of weakness and I think you are starting to see flows move from China and Asia towards India, towards a very strong longer-term growth trajectory. So broadly, the way we look at markets is we do not expect a sustained bull market until some of the global headwinds, some of the kind even Indian headwinds, consumption is a bit weak in India,