Market correction: Long way to go before we get seriously worried, says Shankar Sharma

Market Veteran Shankar Sharma told CNBC-TV18 that the market has to take a breather and there is still a long way to go before one should start to get seriously worried. According to the market veteran, this is nothing more than a small correction.

The Nifty is three percent in the red in the last five trading sessions. Over the past month, the benchmark has seen 3.3 percent correction. However, the bulls are staging a small fight back today (Nov 23) and the index is 0.5 percent in the green, at the time of publishing.

“We have had a vertical rally in the last 18 odd months and where do we go from here? The short answer to that is that we still have a long way to go before we should start getting seriously worried," said Sharma.

Many market participants have been waiting and praying for a correction.

“When you get it, it will happen in a manner that you don’t like. The market has to take a breather and it is taking one right now,” he said, adding, "This is nothing but a correction and nothing more than that."

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The benchmark indexes may not reflect a major fall but it's noteworthy that the midcap and smallcap segments have seen a correction.

According to Shankar Sharma, one is never going to make serious money on a broad basis in the IPO market.

“Odd stocks here or there, you will make a lot of money but usually a well-marketed IPO is already priced to perfection. In fact beyond that and you are setting yourself up for a disappointment,” he said.

“The whole debate around the Paytm fiasco is not warranted because it is buyer beware. So Paytm is only just a symptom, it is not the real problem. The problem is investors get blinded by their own greed and they have only themselves to blame,” he added.

Also Read: Paytm IPO pricing 'absolutely off'; fall 'category killing': BharatPe MD

When asked if the trend of pricing valuations high even for loss-making companies is ebbing, he replied, “When you look at the financials of the companies (new-age companies), the reality is this - they are tiny companies. It is just a hype around them, which is inflating a Rs 2,000 crore topline or a Rs 1,000 crore topline to a one lakh crore valuation, which is absolutely nuts because they have an app. Once you have an app then a Rs 1,000 crore topline suddenly magically gets changed into a one lakh crore valuation merely because you have something called an app.”

Also Read: BOTTOMLINE: SEBI lens on new age IPOs overlooks issue of irrational valuations

“All these companies, except Nykaa, have very low promoter holdings. The pricing of IPOs is dictated by the venture capitalist or the private equity funds. For them the incentive is to price high, pump it up and sell it out in the IPO. These are not strong promoter-driven companies,” Sharma added.

The best themes in Sharma’s view still remains the midcaps and smallcaps.

“You have to play the theme of consumption - building material plays, they have done tremendous for us, we continue to like them. Innerwear companies like Dollar Industries, Lux – have done phenomenally well. Liquor stocks – Radico Khaitan, Globus. There are so many stocks out there which have benefited from the ebbing of the COVID times. There are many out there which will give you multiples of what HDFC Bank is going to give you,” he shared.