Rishi Nathany, Director, Touchstone Wealth Planners, spoke to Puneet Wadhwa on the markets.
 
The markets have seen a sharp rally in the past few sessions with the Nifty scaling past the 5600 mark. Do you expect a correction anytime soon?
 
Corrections could happen anytime, but we do not expect markets to fall substantially, since they are displaying great strength and a lot of pent up demand seems to exist at lower levels.
 
South-India based cement companies have announced a hike in cement prices effective 07 September. Do you think this will be sustainable given the demand-supply mismatch?
 
While we would not like to comment on individual stocks, we do believe that while the cement industry is facing a lot of new capacity additions. The south-based cement stocks did not have as good a run up in the past as the north-based cement stocks.
 
At present, one could invest selectively in such stocks as a contrarian value play.
 
Would you advise investing in the interest rate sensitive stocks ahead of the RBI policy review on 16 September for the near-to-medium term?
 
We do not expect any major rate hikes and as such, rate sensitive stocks would not be affected to that extent.
 
If there are marginal rate hikes, the markets may tend to ignore them, since we are witnessing robust demand in these rate sensitive sectors like autos, etc., which could allow them to pass on the increased costs to consumers.
 
The CNX Midcap index has been doing well since quite some time, as compared to the frontline indices. Do you expect the outperformance to continue for long?
 
We expect the midcap segment to outperform the large cap segment, since there are still quite a few value buys available in quality mid caps, whereas large caps seem to be saturated in terms of PE expansion.
 
Any themes / sectors in the midcap space where once can look to invest from a medium-to-long term perspective?
 
One could look at value buys in the packaging, paper, hospitality, auto ancillary, chemicals and fertilizers space, to name a few.
 
Before we wrap up, please give us your disclosures
 
It would be safe to assume that we/our clients have an exposure to the sectors discussed herein.