Stock market no longer a barometer of the economy, says ace investor Shankar Sharma

Shankar Sharma, vice-chairman and joint MD of First Global, said the stock market is no longer a barometer of the economy.

“It is a very 1990-2000 kind of perspective. The stock market now is nothing but a barometer of economic power. So, every crisis is leading to a large part of companies going out of businesses to be replaced by a handful of companies,” he said.

In an interview to CNBC-TV18, Sharma added that they are not only picking smallcaps. “We pick everything, we don’t pick only smallcaps. We have picked Reliance Industries; it has been a doubler in the last 3 months’ time. So, we will go where the market is telling us to go.”

“My approach has always been to be very flexible, very quick to move, and not have a very rigid view of the way the world should be. The world has changed in the last one months’ time to more smallcaps versus largecaps,” he explained.