India to be an outperformer this year, says Devina Mehra of First Global

Devina Mehra, Chairperson & MD of First Global believes India will be an outperformer this year despite the headwinds.

"This year India is going to be an outperformer. That is our bet and that comes out of the fact that before 2021, for a number of years, India was an underperformer. If you look at the global rankings, India used to be number 20, number 24. 2021 was the first year after a very long time that it was part of the top 10 at number six. Our outperformance trend still continues. As I said, India is one of the handfuls of countries that we still like as an outperformer when we look at the global stance," said Mehra in n interview with ET Now.

The Indian market has been witnessing the outflow of foreign funds since October 2021 but Mehra said her views are not contingent upon foreign fund flows.

"My outperformance bet is not contingent upon whether the flows come or not. That is not the direction of the market. The first time the FII flows came in was the only nine-year period in Indian stock market history that we saw zero returns. So, keep that aside," Mehra told ET Now.

Mehra said it is time to get back to the market whether one is looking at global allocations or one is an Indian investor looking to allocate from other assets back into equities.

While the possibility of a recession is a matter of worry, Mehra said it may not directly impact India.

"As far as the US recession is concerned, the probability of a hard landing has been increasing. The inflation moderation has come on the other side, with concerns on growth, which is why I say be careful what you wish for. You wished for lower inflation but that has come with all these other add on. So this is a part that you need to be careful about. This does not directly impact India. There might be a recession but again even in the US, it is already priced in," said Mehra.

Disclaimer: This article is based on an ET Now interview. The views and recommendations made above are those of the analysts and not of MintGenie.