Bought YES Bank shares aggressively this morning: Amit Goel of Pace 360

Amit Goel, co-founder and chief global strategist at Pace 360, said the asset management company (AMC) 'aggressively' purchased shares of YES Bank Ltd on Wednesday morning. "Today in the early morning, we bought YES Bank (stock) in a very big way. My sense is that there are very good things to happen in the case of YES Bank over the next few months. I believe would definitely give us about 15-20 per cent returns over the next few months. We bought YES Bank very aggressively today morning," he told Business Today.

Sharing views on the ongoing market situation, he said there's relief in the market because of a habit of always discounting the worst when things are bad and always discounting the best when things are good. "India has clearly seen the worst in first half of March and the market has been rather kind since then. We were extremely overweight on the Indian equities in the first half of March and then we gradually took money out of the table when the market rallied very smartly," the market expert stated.

"So, we haven't bought much actually in the last two weeks rather than we have sold many of our investments. From an overweight position where we were almost 96 per cent on equities, we have now gone down to less than 25 per cent on equities," Goel also said.

"On a longer-term basis, this market is now again pretty fully to richly valued and the world is going to be much slower within the next one year. There could be some sort of recession in the US. The longer-term macros are not looking great to me at the moment. We continuously take money out of the table on every rise in the Indian market," the market veteran further stated.

When asked about state-owned lenders, Goel said, "We were positive on PSU banks in the first half of March. But, we have pretty much booked all our profits from that space. Credit growth and net interest margin are going to be an issue going forward. In the next two or three quarters, the NPA (non-performing asset) cycle could take a turn for the worse again. I'm no longer bullish on either the private banks or the PSU banks. We have almost exited entirely the banking space. It is only today that we bought YES Bank shares, as the dynamics are very different there. I'm hoping that all the required RBI clearances and approvals will come in and this would effectively become a Sumitomo (Japan) bank in India. Except for that, I'm not very bullish on the banking space anymore."

Separately, YES Bank has issued its clarification on Japan's SMBC's talks with SBI reports. The private lender mentioned that it is on a growth trajectory and routinely explores opportunities with various stakeholders, which are aimed at enhancing shareholder value.

SBI currently owned a 24 per cent stake in the bank, while other domestic entities such as Kotak Mahindra Bank, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank and Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) held a combined stake of 11.34 per cent in YES Bank. And, private equity (PE) funds Advent International and Carlyle reportedly held 9.2 per cent and 6.84 per cent, respectively.

Meanwhile, YES Bank shares settled 1.84 per cent higher at Rs 18.27 today.