Shares of fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies are gaining traction in India's mutual fund managers' portfolios. They are slowly raising allocation of equity assets in such stocks over the last few months.
After bringing exposure to FMCG stocks to a low of 4.6 per cent last year against the earlier levels of over 8 per cent, it appears as stock markets lose steam, fund managers are not minding to look at consumer stocks yet again.
Interestingly, over the last few months since November, fund managers steadily kept on raising exposure to FMCG stocks and brought it to a level of over 5 per cent in February.
This is the highest allocation to the sector since Modi-led BJP government came to power. In absolute term, nearly Rs 18,300 crore is pumped into FMCG stocks while the amount stood at Rs 11,800 crore in June of last year.
Such a move from fund managers has come at a time when stock markets remained quite volatile. In December alone, BSE's Sensex lost 1,200 points while in January it gained 1,700 points. In the current month Sensex is down 1900 points compared with its February closing.
According to fund managers, though valuations in the sector are much higher than other segments of the markets there is no problem in the structural growth story. They added that it's difficult to see earnings growth for at least next two quarters which can unsettle the markets for short term.
The Rs 12 lakh crore mutual fund industry has Rs 3.65 lakh crore in equity as on 28 February.
No comments:
Post a Comment