Markets will see volatility in next 2 weeks: Jitendra Sriram

In a chat with ET Now, Jitendra Sriram, VP and Fund Manager - Equities, HSBC, gave his views on the general momentum of the market. Excerpts:

A word on the general momentum of the market. Are you expecting about 15% or 20% upside in the markets going forward?

Short term, clearly this week and next week are going to be very interesting weeks. Take today for example, you have three major events, you have the credit policy on hand and then you have 2 of India's top 5 stocks, Reliance and Larsen & Toubro both reporting today. So that is going to clearly lay the direction for the markets. Also, going forward into the week, you have an expiry later this week and it will be interesting to see as whether at this level where we have outperformed MSCI Asia ex-Japan and at this stage, it is interesting to see whether people carry forward their long positions. So that will be another interesting thing to watch out for and the third part is Bharti reporting sometime later this week. More than the fact that what it discloses as earnings is going to be the impact of IFRS because from what we are told, it will be one of the first corporates to move onto an IFRS accounting.

So it is going to be a kind of a direction for how Indian accounts tack up vis-à-vis global standards in terms of IFRS reporting because mind you next year, all the non-financial index stocks will need to move into IFRS. So it is going to give you some direction in terms of how conservative or aggressive our accounting policies are and that should be interesting to watch out for. So the next 2 weeks we are going to see some volatility in markets because of these events that are there. Also early next month, you have the monsoon session of Parliament and this new Direct Tax Code coming in and what it stipulates on long term capital gains and so on could lead to some nervousness. So we are a little conservative on the market.