M&M a sound and decent bet at current levels: Pankaj Pandey, ICICIdirect.com

In a chat with ET Now, Pankaj Pandey, ICICIdirect.com, shares his view on how to play the agriculture theme.

ET Now: That brings me to the broader point. Now that monsoons have been okay, the distribution has been decent, is it time to revisit those agri themes -- be it Escorts, Mahindra & Mahindra Finance or M&M the auto company?

Pankaj Pandey: On the agri side, stocks like M&M would make sense at current levels because already we have seen a good amount of decline in their tractor business. Going forward, we would expect that there will be some rebound in the tractor business in the second half. Stocks like these have not really performed that well within the auto pack, which is where we would expect this stock to do well; in fact we have upgraded our rating on the stock to buy.

On some of the other themes, we would prefer to be very selective in cases like Rallis India, these are the kind of names we would sort of look at playing. However, we would not be looking at chasing every tractor manufacturer at current levels. M&M is a sound and a decent bet at current levels and one does not really need to look at other stocks given the kind of leadership position it has on the tractor side.