'If deploying fresh money... ': Deven Choksey on what to do when market trades at record high

Deven Choksey, MD, DRChoksey FinServ Pvt Ltd, on Thursday said retail investors should continue to deploy their money in the market systematically every month. "If you've created a certain portfolio, which is fundamentally convincing, then keep on adding the weight in this particular situation till the prices are normalised. Many companies in the Nifty50 basket, despite of all-time high market, are available at a price and valuation which is probably when the index was somewhere around 17,000-19,000 levels," the market expert toldBusiness Today TV.

"These are some of the stocks where the fundamentals are good. Yet, they are languishing in this entire rally of 17,000 to 24,000. These are some of the good opportunities that one can go for to play safe in the market," Choksey added.

"If you are deploying fresh money in the market at this point, then stay away from commodities. Stay focussed on fundamentally strong companies in the Nifty50 space," he suggested.

When asked about heavyweight banking stocks, he said, "The FOMO (Fear of missing out) traders have returned to the market. And, as a result of this, some of the large-cap lenders such as HDFC Bank, SBI and Kotak Mahindra Bank have returned with force. These companies continued to perform well on the fundamental side of business, but they were neglected in the market. The firms are now attracting huge amount of inflows.

Meanwhile, Indian equity benchmarks today continued their all-time high run, led by gains in IT, pharma and automobile stocks. The 30-share BSE pack hit a lifetime high of 80,393 and the broader NSE Nifty scaled a fresh lifetime peak of 24,401. India VIX, fear index, slipped 1 per cent to 13.07-level. Broader markets (mid- and small-cap shares) were also up.

10 out of the 16 sector gauges -- compiled by the NSE -- were trading in the green. Sub-indexes Nifty IT, Nifty Pharma and Nifty Auto were outperforming the NSE platform by rising as much as 1.43 per cent, 0.64 per cent and 0.53 per cent, respectively. However, Nifty Bank and Nifty Financial Services slipped 0.39 per cent and 0.32 per cent.

The overall market breadth was strong as 2,045 shares were advancing while 1,696 were declining on BSE.

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) bought Rs 5,483.63 crore worth of shares on a net basis during the previous session while domestic institutional investors (DIIs) sold Rs 924.43 crore worth of shares, exchange data showed.