Why Standard Chartered Wealth prefers large caps in India

Standard Chartered Wealth Management has a buy recommendation on India as it believes India's positive story will continue.

Steve Brice, Chief Investment Officer, said the investment firm favours large-cap stocks in India over small-cap and mid-cap at the moment.

The preference for large caps even though it is slightly expensive is because it is not at a cyclical peak, unlike near peak valuations in the small-cap and mid-cap space, he said.

Also, earnings are more resilient in the large cap space.

Another favourite for Standard Chartered Wealth in Asia, ex-Japan, is Korea.

“We also like Korea. So, Korea is quite a cheap area, but very close to the semiconductor story," he noted.

Among other emerging markets, he expects another 10% upside in China in the short term.

He is overweight on Japan as well.

"I think the key story here is that Japanese investors focusing more on the domestic equity market story, and we're seeing signs of that to some degree. But that's the real deal. If we start seeing flows from bonds in Japan into Japanese equities, then I think the authorities have achieved a big victory.”

The US, he said, continues to remain one of their favourite markets and it has outperformed so far this year.

Given the US market's sensitivity to tech and communication services, which are more resilient to any slowdown and growth. and benefit more from lower interest rates, the US should continue to do well in the coming months, he said.

Brice believes that if the market sees further upward inflation surprises, then that would discourage the US Federal Reserve from easing policies.

US Federal Reserve’s Governor Christopher Waller, in a recent speech at the Economic Club of New York, said that there is no rush to cut the policy rate. However, he noted that rate cuts are not off the table; perhaps it will take place sometime this year.

Commenting on next action anticipated from the US Fed, Brice said, “We had been sort of thinking that maybe the Fed might scale back a little bit on its rate cut trajectory, maybe to two rate cuts rather than three. But they doubled down on that. So these comments sort of almost go back to where we thought we might be. So it is something to watch out for.”