Comments on the bull run in mkt

I am bullish even at these levels. My views on the market remain the same. There has to be a correction at some levels, but it is very difficult to predict at what level the correction will come.

"" Rakesh Jhunjunwala
High-profile investor

Yet another milestone

The Sensex has crossed yet another milestone of 13k as we had expected. The market movement reflects the underlying strength of the economy and the fact that India's growth story is attracting global investors on an unprecedented scale.

We remain optimistic about corporate earnings for the next 6 to 8 quarters and recommend investors to remain invested in equities.

At these levels, markets will be volatile and investors should have the nerves to stay calm during volatile times and focus on the long-term story.

"" R Venkatraman
ED and co-promoter, India Infoline Ltd

Demand-driven

The market is driven by the strength of the Indian companies. They have huge potential to grow owing to strong domestic demand as well as large forays outside India. While most emerging markets are yet to recover to their May highs, Indian markets have exceeded the peaks they achieved in May. While countries, such as Brazil and Russia, were driven by the commodity prices, other emerging markets were linked to the health of the US economy. India, on the other hand, is not very dependent on either of the two.

"" S Mukherji
MD & CEO, ICICI Securities

Valuations fine

During the last three years, we have been aligning our interest rates with those of other countries. During 2000, the interest rates were around 11 per cent, whereas in the US it was 6 per cent.

However, now the spreads have reduced to 200 basis points. This has helped our manufacturing sector tremendously. Our domestic consumption, which is not leveraged on credit, is expected to show explosive growth in the coming years.

Going forward, with increasing financial savings and with capex to GDP ratio at 30 per cent, pressure on interest rates is to likely to remain subdued, even though, we are targeting over 8.5 per cent GDP growth.

Further, with the markets discounting FY08 numbers now, valuation concerns have receded as compared with the May 2006 period.

"" Lalit Thakkar
Director - research, Angel Broking

Long-term prospects

The markets look stretched on a short-term perspective, but over the long term, I think these levels are justified. Four months ago, people were sceptical of the market, but it still rallied.

The Indian markets are also not very vulnerable to a sudden outflow of foreign funds, as our mutual funds also have significant amount of cash.

"" Rashesh Shah CEO and MD, Edelweiss Capital