Weekly dossier: What Shankar Sharma, Nilesh Shah and other top voices of D-Street say about market

Despite, Friday's losses, market benchmarks ended the week with gains even as volatility remained high as the increasing COVID cases worldwide kept markets on edge.

For the week gone by, Nifty50 closed 1.52 percent higher compared to 1.59 percent rally seen in the S&P BSE Sensex.

The top voices of Dalal Street share their views on the market and also discuss their preferred sectors along with tips on how to trade in such a market. Take a look:

Shankar Sharma, Co-Founder and Vice-Chairman, First Global

We follow a tactical asset allocation approach in which we are not exposed to a single market or a single currency or a single asset, and we diversify to the best opportunities available at that point in time. That is our central mantra.

This year is the best year in ten years for anybody to understand the value of risk management.

We usually forget about these things but when markets are good we tend to say, this is all very, very vague stuff, why to bother about risk management, markets only go up all the time.

2020 -- is a great year. It’s like a laboratory or more like a classroom where you’ve learned the lesson of risk management and that is the reason why in our global products we have delivered 21 percent CAGR in dollar terms over the last five years.

Nilesh Shah, MD and CEO of Envision Capital (to CNBC-TV18)

The recovery in the market has been largely fuelled by massive liquidity. As long as we have the support of global markets, as long as the liquidity is there, you are clearly going to see the markets prepare for a recovery in the second half.

The market is poised for a strong recovery in the second half of FY21 given the kind of strong outlook on the rural economy, we have had a favorable start to the monsoon, food prices are still lower, interest rates are still benign and tax rates have come off.

After a bit of a correction, sometime during this quarter, the markets may again begin to advance and recover in the second half.

It is not that the challenges are behind us. You are going to see speed breakers along the way as the market's advance. COVID-19 will keep posing a lot of challenges to business continuity. Therefore, from a purely fundamental and growth perspective, I don’t think one should have very high expectations for the September quarter as well.

Arvind Sanger, Founder & Managing Partner, Geosphere Capital Management (to CNBC-TV18)

Liquidity is riding over all other concerns at the moment. The rally is based on the expectation that we will soon have a vaccine or a COVID cure.

We are optimistic about certain sectors, but not as bullish as this rally suggests. We may see pockets of pent-up demand going ahead.

We are not looking at buying laggards like financials as of now. The companies providing tractors, two-wheelers, financing to rural India can outperform. We are bullish on the IT sector, given huge outsourcing opportunities.

There may be lesser money available for consumption after COVID.

Harsha Upadhyaya, CIO-Equity, President, Kotak Mahindra Asset Management Company (to CNBC-TV18)

We believe positive sentiment is returning to the Indian market. Retail participation has gone back to pre-COVID levels, but institutional participation has not.

We have domestic cyclical in our portfolio and expect large-cap IT stocks to be resilient and outperform peers.

We believe domestic demand will rebound strongly which will be good for metal stocks. We have exposure in metals via ferrous stocks.

We have taken some exposure to the broader market via sectors like agrochemicals.

We continue to have a positive view on defence stocks. We are focussing more on the quality stocks from financial space with no liquidity issues.

We continue to see higher usage for telecom data. Telecom will remain resilient in COVID times.

Amit Shah - Head of India Equity Research - BNP Paribas

India had a decent rally in June when it caught up with some of the under-performance. However, we continue to see cases increase, and economic indicators do not show any material improvement in the near term thereby capping the upside in the equity market.

Having said that, we do not expect a material downside and definitely believe the worse is behind us in terms of equity market performance.

At the start of the pandemic, we had estimated and we still believe that the earnings decline for FY21 will be in the range of 15-25 percent.

More than the earnings, the market will look for cues in the commentary from companies and earnings outlook for FY22.

We believe March-21 fair value to be in the range of 9,600–11,100, depending on how far the lockdowns get extended. As highlighted earlier, this does indicate that the worse is behind us.

Mayuresh Joshi, Head- Equity Research, William O'Neil India

The economic and financial deleveraging expected to be caused by the pandemic has been largely gestated by the markets and the same has been reflected by the downgrades in global GDP and individual economies as well.

However, GDP is expected to bounce back significantly in the next financial year and as markets are a discounting mechanism for events that are expected to unfold over the next four-six quarters, the fall took the expected economic issues in its stride.

The worries about the pandemic and cases rising across the globe, the trials of the vaccines and the various stages that they are in and other macro developments shall lead to huge bouts of volatility and the markets need to adjust for the same in the next few weeks and months.

So, liquidity shall act as a support for the markets but they shall also be reacting to all these developments that take place on a macro and micro basis.

Disclaimer: The above report is compiled from information available on public platforms. Moneycontrol advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions.