Shankar Sharma: India, US at lowest exposure in 30 years, remain bearish on indices – News Air Insight

Ace investor Shankar Sharma‘s India and US equity exposure is lowest in 30 years, the GQuant FinXray founder said in a tweet. The statement comes following a 12-month review of his Family Office’s portfolio and he claimed that the strategy has worked out well for him. He remains negative on both the markets as far as indexes are concerned.

Sharma has listed out five things that came out from the review following India’s September 2024 peak:

1) “India & US today are my lowest exposures ever, in 30 years. Worked out well”.

2) “India portfolio, last 12 months, has been quite outstanding though. Unlisted has been astonishing. Listed, thanks to the March crash, has been excellent too”.

3) Global portfolio has been beyond expectations

4) China has had a stellar 18 months (was early into the trade. Esp in mainland stocks)”.

5) Sharma called the US as the biggest troublemaker and his portfolio has lagged the benchmark by 7% this year. He said that it is the only market where his portfolio has underperformed the benchmarks.
“The US has been my most problematic market. Despite my lowest weight ever, one cannot be zero US. My US portfolio has lagged benchmark by 7% this year. This is the only one that has not beaten respective benchmarks by a massive margin,” Sharma said.

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He attributed the aberration to the US being a “narrow market” where only a handful of companies have delivered superior returns over the index returns.

“The reason for this is very clear: as a matter of policy, I run very diversified strategies globally. Concentration is anathema to me.
But, the US has been a HUGELY concentrated, narrow market, where just a handful of companies have delivered more than the index returns. If you ran a diversified active portfolio, there is almost no way you could beat the benchmark in America,” Sharma opined.

“And there in lies the problem for the American market: it’s extremely narrow and narrow markets do not end well,” the tweet said, highlighting that he continues to be negative on America and India on an index basis.

For him, there have been incredible opportunities across asset classes, markets, sectors & stocks on the global stage.

“But globally, there have been incredible opportunities across asset classes, markets, sectors & stocks. Therefore , the last 12 months have been one of the very best & easiest of my investing life, with the least time spent on investing activity. Ever,” the tweet said.

“My Return on Time Invested (ROTI) has never been higher. For me that remains a key metric I track. Because the higher the ROTI, the higher the RoE of life itself. And therefore, mathematically, Life’s PE Ratio keeps trending higher too, ipso facto. In life and in markets, we know ” E” doesn’t matter as much as the RoE and the PE,” Sharma further said.

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