Defence And Travel To Drive Next Leg Of Growth: Vaibhav Sanghavi

The stock market is likely to stay steady in the coming months as several headwinds that had weighed on investor sentiment appear to be fading, Vaibhav Sanghavi, chief executive officer of ASK Hedge Solutions, told NDTV Profit in an interview.

“From the last few months' perspective, when we had several headwinds including tariffs, geopolitical risks, and to some extent very soft earnings as well, these headwinds are now kind of getting out of the way,” Sanghavi said, adding “our economy is kind of doing pretty steady, in fact, well.”

Sanghavi highlighted defence and consumption as the two sectors he is most upbeat about in the near term. “Defence has become one sector to constantly look out for,” he said. He expects steady orders in the sector, though he had a word of caution as well. “I wouldn't assume that the order books are going to swell multiple times even from here onwards,” he said.

On consumption, Sanghavi pointed to discretionary spending, travel, and tourism as the first areas of growth, followed by consumer staples. “The first expenditure will probably be on experiences in terms of travel and tourism, and then the next lane probably will flow to autos, and then to consumer staples,” he said.

The CEO said he favoured domestic-focused stocks and remains positive on non-banking financial companies in particular, due to lower funding costs. “For the banks, it may be negative; for the NBFCs, it may be positive purely because the cost of funding immediately kind of comes down,” Sanghavi said.

Conversely, he is avoiding banks, globally-exposed sectors, apart from information technology, and cyclical sectors with “extremely high” valuations.