Market Watch | Aashish Somaiyaa CEO of White Oak Capital Management
On Markets
About the market levels, I am not in the camp which is sceptical or cynical right now because as I have tried to indicate before, I believe that after a series of false starts over the last seven-eight years, we are finally seeing an economic upswing. The last time we had a serious economic upswing was when nominal gross domestic product (GDP) growth was double digits and corporate earnings per share (EPS) growth was also double-digits for a series of about four-five years. After that, we have had a series of disappointments but finally, we are getting to a new start.
Many things, which are happening are not merely cyclical and I will use the much-cliched word which is structural or talking about lasting changes. So, there are many things in which we are not going to go back to pre-Covid habits or pre-Covid conditions. Whatever is happening in China and where India stands on a relative basis – the way our reforms, how we are seizing certain opportunities which can make India be a preferred manufacturing base as well as export base and the realization has always been that it is a local market, if you see digital adaption, if you see capital market adaption, one of the most important things which happened in Covid was that globally the economic cycles for all countries were reset back to square one. I think that economic cycles have been reset into synchronicity, which happened thanks to Covid, the world has become more supportive and in many ways, we are not going to go back to pre-Covid. There is a lot that has changed.
We can make returns in line with nominal GDP growth and since we are stock-pickers, hopefully, do slightly better.
On Tech Space
We are very constructive on the entire space. The reason being that one has to be open-minded. I don’t think there are any rules that loss-making companies can’t generate positive cash flows as we go in the future. So, whether it is consumer tech, fintech, we do have exposure to this sector and we are positively oriented to it.
