Manulife's Rana Gupta says market expensive, recommends bottom-up investing

Manulife Investment Management's Senior Portfolio Manager and India Equity Specialist, Rana Gupta, believes India market is expensive and it is time for investors to shift away from sector-based strategies to a bottom-up approach.

Gupta says it's best to avoid bets on an entire sector, and a better strategy to analyse individual stocks and companies. “One should not bet on a sector pulling through all the stocks. So, this time, round one has to be much more bottom-up than the last year.”

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Gupta expects India to continue benefiting from the underperformance of China and resultant capital inflows. However, he also noted the possibility of increased competition from the ASEAN or Latin American markets.

Also Read | India ranks second after China in MSCI EM index after weightage surpasses Taiwan

A Nuvama report indicates that India's representation in the MSCI Emerging Markets (EM) Index might surpass 20% by early 2024, driven by continuous institutional investments and consistent Foreign Institutional Investor (FII) involvement. Jefferies analysts have similarly forecasted increased foreign investment in India by 2024. Although India currently constitutes a relatively modest portion of Emerging Market (EM) portfolios, its expanding significance is capturing the interest of global funds.

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