Sensex above 70K possible till next Samvat? What ETMarkets Diwali Survey shows

NEW DELHI: Led by capex revival, strong domestic demand and expectations around peaking of Fed's rate hike cycle, investors are hopeful that the domestic stock market will bounce back with a bang by next Diwali which marks the beginning of the Hindu calendar year Vikram Samvat.

While Sensex has lost around 3.5% since last Diwali, a survey by ETMarkets shows that market participants believe that the Sensex can not just touch record high but also cross the 70,000 mark by next Diwali. The highest target for Nifty goes up to 22,000.

Among the bullish lot, the consensus target for Nifty is around 19,000-19,500 while that for Sensex is around 65,000.


Siddhartha Khemka, Head of Retail Research at Motilal Oswal, said his target for Nifty is at 19,500 for next Diwali. "Domestic consumption, discretionary spending, credit growth and capacity expansion would be the key growth drivers," he said.

Domestic brokerage firm Prabhudas Lilladher sees Nifty at 20,936 in the next 12 months. "We estimate Nifty EPS at Rs 855.2 and Rs 963.4 and introduce FY25 EPS at Rs 1,069.2. This shows a growth of 12.1/12.7/11% for FY23/24/25. Our estimates are 3.5% and 5.6% and 8.3% lower than consensus EPS estimates,'' Vikram Kasat, Head - Advisory, Prabhudas Lilladher, said.

Nifty is currently trading at 19x one-year forward PE, which is a 7.8% discount to its 10-year average of 20.5.

Deepak Jasani, Head of Retail Research, HDFC Securities, said central banks' monetary policies, geo-political issues, inflationary trends, rural income growth momentum, economic growth momentum in India and globally would drive the market this year.

While LKP Securities sees Sensex at 61,000 in the next one year, Geojit sees the index at 64,700. On the other hand, technical analyst Nooresh Merani sees Nifty at 20,000 and Sensex at 72,000.

Market Mood
Out of 22 participants in the survey, a majority 13 of them said they are bullish on the market at this stage while only 2 of them were bearish. The remaining 7 had a neutral stance.

On whether Sensex and Nifty will end at record high at the end of the calendar year 2022, the majority view was in the negative.

Despite having outperformed major global indices, Nifty has advanced less than 1% on a year-to-date basis in the calendar year 2022.

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