India’s markets could “easily” see a 10% return in the next six months, and that’s a buying opportunity for investors, according to a strategist from Credit Suisse.
Its benchmark stocks have come down from earlier highs this year. The Nifty 50 has declined around 8.71% while the S&P BSE Sensex index has slipped about 7.44% as of Wednesday’s close, from their highs in June.
“It might take a bit of time for (the) Indian equity market to rebound strongly, but I think if somebody has a six month plus horizon, they could easily see 10% return from here,” Suresh Tantia, senior investment strategist at Credit Suisse’s Asia Pacific CIO Office, told CNBC’s “Capital Connection” on Tuesday.
“Every time (the) market has corrected by 10%, it’s always been a good buying opportunity unless there is an external risk,” Tantia said.
At present, he added: “We don’t see any external risk for India.”
Tantia pointed to the low price of oil currently, with international benchmark Brent crude futures sitting at the low 60 dollars per barrel level. India, a major crude importer, is especially vulnerable to any increases in oil prices, being heavily reliant on the commodity. More expensive oil would lead to a widening current account deficit for the country.
Additionally, India faces “no political risk” following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s landslide election victory earlier this year, Tantia said.
Meanwhile, the country’s central bank is also cutting interest rates and the government is offering “some sort of fiscal stimulus support.”
In late August, the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) central board said it will transfer 1.76 trillion Indian rupees (about $24.6 billion) as dividend to New Delhi for the year that ended on June 30, 2019 — higher than what the market had been expecting.
The RBI follows a 12-month period that runs from July to June and pays an annual dividend to the government based on its profits. Last year, the RBI board formed a committee to look into how much the central bank should hold in its reserves amid a push from the government to access the surplus for stimulus packages.
India is also a “defensive market” that is more domestic oriented, Tantia said, leaving it relatively insulated from the ongoing trade fight between Beijing and Washington — as compared to most of Asia where markets are “very vulnerable” to headlines about the dispute.
The ongoing, protracted trade war between the U.S. and China has led to tariffs slapped on billions of dollars worth of each other’s goods, hitting badly companies which are heavily intertwined in those supply chains especially in Asia.
— CNBC’s Saheli Roy Choudhury contributed to this report.
