After studying law I vectored towards journalism by accident and it's the only job I've done since. It's a job that has taken me on a private jet to Jaisalmer - where I wrote India's first feature on fractional ownership of business jets - to the badlands of west UP where India's sugar economy is inextricably now tied to politics. I'm a big fan of new business models and crafty entrepreneurs. Fortunately for me, there are plenty of those in Asia at the moment.
In the short term, markets are driven by sentiment, but over longer decadal periods, it’s the business performance that matters. According to an analysis by brokerage Motilal Oswal, in the 10 years since 2009, the Nifty rose 8.9 percent annually versus an 8.2 percent earnings growth. A majority of the earnings growth (11 percent a year) came in the first half of the decade and it is anybody’s guess whether these valuations will sustain.
While the outperformance was skewed to the second half of the decade, it was led by a familiar set of businesses, with banking and financial services, consumer, auto, IT and pharma accounting for a majority of the gains. The Nifty outperformed gold, bank fixed deposits and Indian government bonds. On a global scale, the Nifty was the second-best performing market in local currency terms after the US (S&P500), but fourth in US dollar terms after the US, Japan and Taiwan.