Not a good time to chase the market: Rashesh Shah, Edelweiss Capital

This is a bitter sweet kind of a 6000. What are the lessons you think this particular rally provides?

Everybody was trying to wait for the market to break out and then say I will buy after the market starts going up. It is hardly ever an optimal strategy because we had almost a year of a sideways market where the market was hovering around in an 8-10% zone and then it just broke out about 4 weeks ago. So in the last 4 weeks, it has gone off almost 12-13-14%. So it is not worthwhile because there are a few weeks in the year in which the market really makes a move and for investors to try and catch those period is very hard. So all through the year whenever opportunities are good, whenever good companies and good sectors are there, investors should take that opportunity and not try to time the market so efficiently.

Did you see this coming? A couple of weeks back we were talking about the index has not done too much year to date and now the tables have completely turned. If you are looking at an upside from these levels, how much are you working with?

Almost for the last 4 to 5 months every time we spoke to investors, especially international investors (I was in the US a couple of months ago), almost all investors were underweight India and everybody was waiting for a correction because all of us have been saying India is more expensive as compared to other emerging markets, is slightly premium priced and everybody thought that India will become equal to other emerging markets and that is when people were actually planning to increase their allocation. But obviously things do not happen in that way. Now could anybody have anticipated the catalyst this time? It is hard to say when, but we all knew that there were a lot of allocations which were waiting on the sidelines, most people were underweight India and everybody was awaiting a correction which obviously has not come at all.

 In an interview with ET Now, Rashesh Shah, chairman & CEO, Edelweiss Capital Ltd, spoke on current markets trends. Excerpts: