India stocks drop in volatile trading

Bloomberg

Indian stocks declined in volatile trading as investors weighed the worsening economic outlook with the novel coronavirus continuing to spread.
The S&P BSE Sensex fell 0.5% to 34,695.76 in Mumbai, while the NSE Nifty 50 Index dropped 0.4% after both gauges earlier erased losses to gain as much as 0.5%. The measures are both set for their best quarter since 2009 and only their second month of gains this year. Volatility may be heightened due to the expiry of futures contracts.
“The near-term pressure from rising coronavirus cases and slowing global growth will weigh on the market,” said Anita Gandhi, an investment adviser at Arihant Capital Markets Ltd. in Mumbai.
India’s slower-than-expected recovery from a prolonged lockdown prompted International Monetary Fund to deliver it the steepest gross domestic product downgrade in projections of the world’s main economies. Reported novel coronavirus are the fourth-highest in the world and continue to climb.
The rupee weakened 0.2% to 75.5838 versus the US dollar, while the yield on the most-traded 6.45% 2029 government bond fell 2 basis points to 6.02%. Fourteen of 19 sector sub-indexes compiled by BSE Ltd. slipped, led by a gauge of telecom companies.

Small India investors are latest to snag beaten-down stocks
The resurgence in Indian equities despite the economic impact from the still-spreading coronavirus has bewildered professional investors.
Mom-and-pop investors, though, are all in. They’re piling into beaten-down stocks such as financials, telecom and high-quality drugmakers amid expectations that Asia’s third-largest economy may recover faster than expected as it gradually unlocks from world’s biggest lockdown.
Mirroring the rush of first-time investors who drove record sign-ups at US brokerages including Robinhood, India has seen about 1.8 million new accounts opened since March. The benchmark S&P BSE Sensex is down 14% for the year even after rebounding from the worst sell-off since 2008.
The Sensex rebounded 36% from its March 23 bottom, as local policymakers and governments globally added stimulus to counter the devastation caused by the coronavirus. But there’s a wide dispersion in performance — the banking sector is down 31% year-to-date, while healthcare stocks have rallied.
“Blue-chip valuations look reasonable and we foresee many new investors coming into the market to take advantage of this correction,” said Nikhil Kamath, co-founder and chief investment officer of Zerodha Broking Ltd., India’s largest
online discount broker.

Retail investors are pivoting toward cyclicals as these suffered the most during the lockdown. That underscores the narrative that this is about expectations that the worst is over. Valuations for auto, energy and metal stocks remain low versus the broader market.
Kamath said there’s demand for Housing Development Finance Corp., India’s largest mortgage lender that’s down 24% this year, as well as drugmakers. ICICI Securities Ltd. is seeing appetite for large private banks, beaten-down shadow lenders and telecom, said Chief Executive Officer Vijay Chandok.
“Our customers have been net buyers to the tune of about 85 billion rupees during the past four months, with the ‘buy’ percentage increasing from 51% to 62% in the period,” Chandok said.
Other brokers including IIFL Securities Ltd. say interest has been revived in mid-cap stocks. Abhimanyu Sofat, head of research at IIFL, listed Vodafone Idea Ltd. among names that have seen a surge in retail participation.
Shares have surged more than 50% this month after a May 28 Financial Times report that Alphabet Inc.’s Google is considering buying a stake in the British telecom giant’s Indian unit.
Yet as in other regions, investor optimism is yet to be backed by a meaningful improvement in economic data.
While trade fared better in May than in the previous month, and the services purchasing managers’ index climbed back to double-digits in May from the world-record low in April, shoppers seem to be staying home. Bloomberg Intelligence expects the economy to contract 4.5% for fiscal 2021 — with significant downside risks to the forecast.