Turn to dark horse bets as the market corrects: Vidya Bala

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Vidya Bala, Co-Founder, PrimeInvestor.in, says “in terms of sectors, we are looking more keenly in sectors like consumption in pockets, not the traditional FMCG but more some of the discretionary spending spaces. We are also looking at the banking and financial space which did not participate last year. Three key factors – credit, e-commerce and social media enablers – will democratise purchasing power and with that, players like Jio Finance are very well placed to capitalise with the kind of obvious breadth that they have. You could call these dark horse bets. But again, in a market that is brimming with confidence, it is very hard to say otherwise. A corrective phase is when you sit back and decide whether you can handle these kinds of stocks.”

What is your market outlook? Where are you investing right now?
Vidya Bala: At this point in time, we would call ourselves being cautiously optimistic.

We would welcome corrections like the one that we saw on Monday. We thought we were on a target in terms of our earnings outlook about 18% ending for FY24 and possibly mid-teens for the Nifty in FY25.

But, we are getting a bit concerned about the rise in commodity prices and that could be a put off in terms of where we are expected to go for the coming year. We are keenly watching whether the sustained rise in commodities especially in metals and the inputs used for the FMCG sector could impact the earnings for India Inc for FY25.

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