From Asian Paints to Bajaj Finance: Ten largecaps ripe for picking

Apart from trading at a discount to their historic valuation, many companies are industry leaders with superior balance sheets and financial ratios

Indian equities continue their upward trajectory but largecaps, those stocks valued at Rs 20,000 crore or more, continue to underperform the broader market. The largecap-oriented BSE Sensex is up 31.9 per cent since the end of October last year lagging mid and smallcap indices by a big margin. For example, the BSE MidCap index has risen 58.4 per cent and the BSE SmallCap has rallied 55.6 per cent during the period.

This is not a short-term phenomenon. Smaller companies have been beating their larger peers on the bourses for a while now. The benchmark BSE Sensex is