Next year is going to be phenomenal for Indian equities: Vikas Khemani

Vikas Khemani, Executive Vice President & Co-Head, Institutional Equities, Edelweiss

You had some advice for retail investors- if you could flash that out a little bit for us ...what is your advice to retail investors should they be looking to reduce their portfolio beta?

Vikas Khemani: In fact as I said that its just a temporary phenomena we have over next 3 to 6 months where there could be heightened portfolio volatility but next year perspective, I mean from a calendar year 2011 perspective I remain very bullish and if market turns out to be very good then I think high beta portfolio do very well.

So I would not really advice people to kind of go down significantly on the beta but I think from retail investors perspective I think the best way of investing into remains through the mutual fund but my point was more towards I think one should not reduce the equity exposure at this point in time towards Indian equities.

In my opinion, from now to December retail investor should continuously increase their exposure towards Indian equities as I believe that next year would be a phenomenal year from Indian equities standpoint of view and that is I think would be my advice.
Next year will be a phenomenal year, are we going to then scale a new peak next year or is that going to come this year?

Vikas Khemani: Like I mean exact timing obviously depends how the global macro pan out. Structurally my point is that I think once the global volatility settles down, once we have some amount of stability coming from the global volatility and the global macros I think Indian markets will do very well because Indian macros are very-very and very favourable for equities.

So if the volatility reduces the 3 months time markets will start doing well then. I mean I have no idea and no clarity how long this volatility is going to continue and so but I know for sure and I have a strong view that the moment this volatility settles down it could be 3 months-4 months-6 months but I think once that happens, we will see a sustained performance of the equity market, sustained flow towards the Indian equities both from the domestic as well as the international investors and that will drive the market returns.