Market to weather tapering, remain bullish: Manish Sonthalia

In a chat with ET Now, Manish Sonthalia, Sr VP & Head-Equities PMS, Motilal Oswal Asset Management-PMS shares his view on the market. Excerpts:
ET Now: Where are the bulls? On Diwali Day every one was bullish?

Manish Sonthalia: Bulls are there, the market would continue to remain bullish; this talk of pre-ponement of US tapering has started but like many other episodes like Greece, Europe, Portugal, tapering, shutdown, the present weakness shall also pass. So the bottom line is that the last quarter numbers are slightly better than estimates and as was quoted in The Economic Times today, markets are actually at 16000 odd levels if we remove top performers out of that.

So valuations are comforting, global macros and news flows will continue to be there and the key event to watch out for is near term politics in India so that is how we are placed. Let us see how we play out this entire episode.

ET Now: Do you sense that the rupee could yet again become a big irritant and thereby have its repercussion on the equity market as well which has already played out last four trading sessions?

Manish Sonthalia: It depends on oil. Since oil has corrected to closer to 105 now on the Brent and if it corrects further down to $100, then the pressure on the currency will get elevated to that extent. Remember 30-40% of oil demand is now back to the spot market so, it was normal that rupee would have depreciated slightly from that 60-62 band and it is now closer to around 63 band, but I do not see that 68-69 again coming back on the rupee front, because oil has corrected and exports have started to pick up.