Market Outlook

Hi friends,

At the outset, let me apologize for not being as active on this blog as I used to be. It's just that I've been awefully busy lately. I'll try to answer individual queries (time permitting) but please feel free to answer each other's queries if you wish to.



Now for my current views on the Market situation. The market has seen a very nice bounce from the lows of this year in the last three weeks. But the big question is whether this move is sustainable or whether this is a dead cat bounce. My reading is that even if we have put the worst behind us, things are not going to be all hunky dory from now on for the rest of the year. The market may still take about 2-3 more months to stabilize and a positive, sustainable uptrend may be seen from August-September onwards. As predicted by me in my New Year blog, IT and Pharma Sector stocks have outperformed the market so far. The biggest concern for the Indian market right now is inflation and cement, steel sectors have been under threat by the govt. as being price control candidates. But my point of view on Cement is that it is a good time for long term investors to get into this sector as pressure from the govt. is only a temporary sentiment dampner. On the ground, the fact is that there is a very robust demand for Cement and business is good.



The bad news coming from the US may also take a few more months to end, and only after the US Markets stabilize will our market see a sustained positive move. This market is presenting an opportunity for long term investors to invest in high quality, low PE - high growth stocks. Unfortunately, there is not much to do for very short term traders right now. Traded volumes are very low and there is a lack of interest from the retail investors who were badly hit by the crash early in the year. At this point, the likely trading range for the Sensex for this year seems to be between 14500 and 21600.

Cheers!