Thursday, March 26, 2020

STAY THE COURSE

All was going well for Indian Markets until early March 2020, while the broader indices like Nifty 50 and Sensex were making new highs in last 18-24 months, beginning September 2019 until early March’20 the rally started to extend beyond top 15-20 stocks on to a lot of quality midcap and small cap companies as well. This was all backed by very strong inflows from FII and relatively steady positive flows from DIIs too.

And then came Carona/ COVID19

As the spread of the virus started to build, global markets started to correct violently with almost all major global indices correcting in the range of 35-40%. Indian markets too corrected very sharply and rather quickly with continuous selling from FIIs on a daily basis to the extent of 3000-4000 cr. All kind of companies including bluest of blue chips fell down anywhere in range of 25%-50%. Indian market cap to GDP went down from 70% to 55% (right now 49% source MOFSL) and Nifty valuations (P/E) corrected from about 28 times to 17 times. Trillions of dollars of wealth (world market cap is down ~20tn USD) has been eroded globally so far and any bottoming out of the markets is becoming very difficult to predict. It is quite likely that till such time news around any positive developments emerge on further spread of COVID 19, the markets will remain extremely volatile and could swing 5-10% either side on daily basis.

This sharp , sudden fall spooked investors. In times like this it is important to engage with and assure investors. 
It is natural for them to stop believing in equities and fund houses at these times. But our request is to even if you don’t want to invest now, don’t redeem. In equity markets - Downs are temporary. Ups are permanent.

We created a digital film to present this thought. Also supported by data on other digital media

 The theme of telling people to stay the course with their investments was also presented in social media through a campaign using relevant and topical quotes under the overall idea : " KEEP THE FAITH IN EQUITY"