In an exclusive interaction with India Today, stock market veterans largely opined that there's more pain left and domestic benchmarks are yet to bottom out. "The bleeding may end soon. By soon I mean one or two months but then the repair of investor confidence might take another 3-4 months. Healing or recovery will take 6-9 months," said Samir Arora, founder and chief investment officer of Helios Capital.
GQuant Investech founder Shankar Sharma feels this kind of correction is not easy to navigate for people. "The market is cyclical. The cycles are not short-lived. They take longer to form, they take longer to peak and then they take a little bit less to correct. It might take a few months, even a year or around two years to heal," Sharma stated.
Nilesh Shah, Managing director of Kotak Mutual Fund, advised investors should brace for choppy weather throughout their lifetime. "If you are an investor, you have to be ready for volatility. Right now, the market is driven by FPI (Foreign portfolio investors) selling. As long as FPIs are selling, the market will continue to correct. The moment selling stops, the market will bottom out," Shah added.
In response to a query on public sector enterprises, the market specialist said, "The floating was low in many stocks and because of limited floating, the valuations were sky high. Those sky-high valuations are finding that there is a gravitation. Despite the correction, I think they are still trading at a much higher valuation. I will advise caution there."
Shah mentioned that there are segments of public sector enterprises such as oil marketing companies which are cheap. But there is always regulatory uncertainty and hence they may remain cheap. "Some of the PSU banks now look good. Valuations are cheap, deposit franchise is strong and NPA pressure is limited. In public sector enterprises, go on a bottom-up basis where you think there is valuation comfort and limited policy uncertainty," he added.
Meanwhile, Indian equity benchmarks closed in the red today as automobile, FMCG and IT stocks dragged. The 30-share BSE Sensex pack fell 96 points or 0.13% to finish at 72,990. The broader NSE Nifty index shed 37 points or 0.17% to end at 22,083, taking its losing run to the 10th straight session. India VIX, fear index, rose 0.49% to 13.83-level.
Foreign equity outflows in the first two months of 2025 hit Rs 1,13,721 crore level, with the average daily FPI selling now standing in the north of Rs 2,700 crore.