Laggard stocks 'bottomed out', to do well on market rally: Ashwani Gujral

In a chat with ET Now, Ashwani Gujral, Fund Manager, Ashwanigujral.com shares his view on the market. Excerpts:

ET Now: Can the laggards of the last 12 months put up a better show in the next 12?

Ashwani Gujral: That obviously will be the case if the economy gets better, if the markets get better.

The laggard stocks have gone through a bear market. A bear market ends when everybody is out, so chances are everybody is out of PSU banks, everybody was out from all sort of construction, infra, ADAG. Therefore all of these stocks have “bottomed out”.

So it is quite likely that these stocks perform or even outperform the defensives which on their own will remain a secular story. Maybe they will start moving sideways like we have seen Lupin and Sun. They have not participated in the last 250 points of the Nifty, so obviously as markets move higher a lot of these beaten up groups, unless they have very serious problems, like cyclical problems, will come back fairly strongly.