Top investment bankers and brokerage houses see good returns in automobiles, banking, commercial vehicles, computer services, ferrous metals, pharmaceuticals and integrated oil sectors in the calendar year 2003.
The laggards are expected to be food-processing, telecommunication and non-ferrous metals.
However, most of the brokerage houses forecast chemicals in commodity, personal products and building & construction materials to remain neutral during the year.
Most of them are overweight on Tata Steel, Bajaj Auto, HDFC, Ranbaxy Laboratories, State Bank of India, Reliance Industries and Nestle. The stocks that have been marked as under-weight are Tata Engineering, Digital GlobalSoft, NIIT, Smithkline Beecham Consumer, Colgate-Palmolive and ACC.
Other large-cap companies such as Hindustan Lever, HPCL, Hindalco, MTNL and Mahindra and Mahindra, ICICI Bank and VSNL. The opinion on software sector varies vastly, most of them are still overweight on Infosys Technologies and Satyam Computer in absence of other comparable plays.
After two years of negative returns, Indian equities, which delivered about 3 per cent positive returns on the sensex in 2002, is expected to deliver about 10 per cent returns in 2003. However, most of the brokerages and bankers are moderately bullish after averaging the downside risks.
The overall optimism for 2003 stems from good liquidity, below-average valuations, better corporate balance sheets, a strong rupee, a virtual end to the Unit Trust of India
