Global scenario has worsened: Anil Ahuja

Global markets are extremely volatile. While many analysts are bullish that the worst may be over soon, some are waiting for the market to correct further. In an interview to Bloomberg TV India, IPEplus Advisors CEO Anil Ahuja says the global situation has worsened in the last 12 months and Indian markets may correct another 10 per cent. Dollar investors have not made money in the last 5-7 years, he said.

Things are incredibly topsy-turvy, one don’t even know where to start. What are you thinking when you are watching the screens for these last few sessions or even weeks? I think it has now become like the last 10 overs of a cricket match. It is fun to watch but you don’t know which way it is going to end. Markets open up and then they close down and the next morning they open further down or up and it is all over the pace. I don’t think you can make any sense of what is going on right now.

Given the current scenario, is there any silver lining one can look for? Short answer, I don’t think there is any silver lining right now. If you look at the numbers, whatever corporate results that have come so far-and I think big ones are going to come next weekend, which is when the PSU banks are going to report and the whole bunch is going to come in a couple of days-they are showing a 5 per cent growth year-on- year in nominal terms. If you take away inflation, you have got real growth rate of zero. So, I really don’t know what gives us confidence to expect consensus growth rate of 16 per cent and 18 per cent over the next two years.

If you just look back as to why we have got ourselves in this type of situation, is it more to do with the China hard-landing or the uncertainty over Fed's rate tightening cycle? I actually think we are looking at some of the smaller issues. Let us look at the really big picture. And you look at January 2016 and compare it to January 2015. In January 2016, what has improved? China is in a worse situation than it was. Russia and Brazil are in a worst situation. In the Middle East, I would say there is a war going on, which is under-reported.

Everybody is bombing each other and nobody knows who is bombing whom and who is on which side. Try and draw a grid and find who is fighting with whom and you will not be able to make sense of it. So, that is another place where the crisis is going on. The refugee crisis going on in Europe is another big mess. Look at the kind of political turmoil that Europe is seeing-even at the periphery Portugal and Italy. Or look at the French elections, you had a pretty sweeping win for what all considered the ultra right wing. You have got Britain talking about an exit from the EU loop. So we are talking about a reasonable mess. Oil prices are another element all along in the mix, which is significantly worse than what it was 12 months ago. We know that oil at $30 a barrel is good for us (India) and oil at $30 fundamentally should be good for lot of the world but it causes a level of instability, which is not easy for the world to handle. You have got shale in a mess.

If you put all of this together, we actually feel a lot worse than it did 12 months ago because that time the only big problem we had was will Greece default? But today you have got at least 5 countries in that sort of a situation and Greece has gone away as a roblem.

Don't you expect more foreign flows coming to India on expectation of more rate cuts? Of course we do.

In the larger global context, where do we stand? Aren’t we relatively better placed? The presentation that we make which show returns from Indian markets, we always show it in terms of Indian rupees (INR). You try and flip that in US dollar, we are very far away from the peak that we reach in 2008. We are now 20 per cent below that number. Dollar investors have not made money in the last 5-7 years.

What does it means in terms of earnings? ANIL: A few months ago, I have forecast Nifty at 6,800-level. We are still expensive. Do we see a correction? I think 10 per cent down from here, you are at an average. I don't believe the companies’ growth rates are what it was on an average in the last 15 years.