International investors need to be much more selective in India, says HSBC's Bill Maldonado

Bill Maldonado, CIO- Asia Pacific at HSBC Global Asset Management, is of the view that if we can turn some of the last year's big headwinds, namely the Fed’s stance on interest rate hikes and the trade negotiations, to even neutral without a tailwind, 2019 may well be a good year for markets.

“We may be moving into a slightly more positive period for global markets, for equities perhaps especially for emerging markets (EMs) and Asia. A couple of things that have been big headwinds in 2018 namely the Fed’s stance on interest rate hikes and the trade negotiations are turning a bit more neutral perhaps a little bit early to say they are turning into tailwinds but they are certainly turning a bit more neutral and I think that will allow the underlying positive characteristics of the market come out and what I mean by that is that valuations are very cheap and profitability during this entire very volatile period has been improving at kind of a very significant double digit rate of growth, which has left us with a very attractive market. So if we can turn some of these headwinds even to neutral without a tailwind, we can maybe have a very positive period in the markets,” Maldonado told CNBC-TV18 on Friday.

Talking about the growth prospects for this year, Maldonado said, “We have to get a measure of the degree of slowdown so don’t forget in 2017 and going into 2018, we had very strong global synchronised growth way above trends rates of growth coupled with very low inflation. So we had a real Goldie locks period. It was a very strong period of time for market and we saw the consequences of that in 2017 with very strong asset performances."