India emerges as one of Asia’s top stock markets despite Covid-19 crisis

Indian stocks were among Asia-Pacific’s top-performing markets in May despite a resurgence in coronavirus infections in the country in recent months.

India’s stock benchmark, the Nifty 50, rose 6.5% for the month while the BSE Sensex was up 6.47%.

“The old phrase ‘go away and sell in May’ wasn’t true – at least for this month,” Tuan Huynh, the chief investment officer for Europe and Asia-Pacific at Deutsche Bank International Private Bank, was quoted as saying by CNBC. “In the Indian case, I think it is relatively surprising.”

According to Huynh, “The markets seem to like to differentiate between economic and obviously corporate earnings development versus then the rise of the new cases.”

US investment bank Goldman Sachs said its stance on India's markets is “overweight” and expects stocks there to outperform.

“Markets tend to, as they say, live in the future and not in the present,” Timothy Moe, co-head of Asia macro research and chief Asia-Pacific equity strategist at Goldman Sachs, told CNBC last week.

The emerging markets investing guru Mark Mobius said in May it’s “quite amazing” that India’s Covid-19 crisis has not affected the stock market much. Mobius added that the South Asian country’s stock market was among his favorites.

India is the second worst-hit country in the world in terms of Covid-19 cases, having registered more than 28 million infections so far. Daily infection cases have eased from the record high of over 400,000 at the start of May but are still hovering above 100,000. The nation reported over 127,510 new cases and 2,795 deaths as of Tuesday, which is the lowest in 54 days.

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