Indian market has become a narrow bull & a broad bear market, says Shankar Sharma of First Global

There was plenty of stock specific action on July 17, but clearly Reliance was the flavour of the day with a slew of announcements coming in from the company's 43rd annual general meeting (AGM). To discuss the road ahead for the market and analyse the announcements from Reliance's AGM, Latha Venkatesh and Prashant Nair spoke to Sunil Singhania Founder of Abbakkus Asset Management and Shankar Sharma, Vice Chairman and Joint MD of First Global.

Speaking on Reliance Sharma said, "If you look at the contribution of Reliance to the whole up move in the index, it is a pretty significant part of the overall recovery that India as a broad market has seen from the lows of end of March. So when there is so much ridding on a single horse, all that money is always going to be jittery money. In India there has been only two kinds of recoveries in the last three months - first is beaten down financials - banks, NBFCs, real estate and the second category in its own right is Reliance. So everybody in terms of quality went for Reliance and so when that horse has run so fast, so hard, in a matter of three months the stock of that size doubling, there is always going to be a temptation to take that money off the table."

On Indian markets Sharma said, "India is one of the weakest markets this year. It is down 24 percent. It is right at the bottom of the pack, so it is an underperforming market, there are other markets which are doing far better. India in my view remains an underperforming market but with some very good stocks. We are not saying that there is going to be a broad bull market in India anytime soon, it is going to be narrow, focused on a few stocks. It has become a narrow bull market and a broad bear market."