India a key beneficiary of global portfolio diversification: Jonathan Schiessl

Synopsis

Global equities are performing well despite concerns about tariffs and geopolitical issues. Investors are seemingly ignoring negative news, and the rising index is compelling bears to reallocate to equities. Emerging markets, particularly India, are benefiting from global investors diversifying their portfolios beyond the US, driven by positive ETF flows and a search for new investment destinations.

"The move we are seeing from global and US investors to broaden out their global portfolios to not just be US plus a little bit of other stuff and certainly we are seeing that happening and there is quite a bit of money coming out and searching for homes and EM is certainly benefited from that and India remains a big beneficiary of that," says Jonathan Schiessl, Westminster Asset Management.

It is turning out to be a great patch for global equities. I mean, just not Indian equities, S&P 1% away from its all-time high, Nasdaq at an all-time high. The same market in the month of April and when I say same market, equities in the month of April were nervous because of tariff implementation. Is that adjustment over now?

Jonathan Schiessl: You are quite right. If you look at where equities are globally and you look at the worries that markets have ingested, it is quite extraordinary really to see where we are. I think what has happened, there is certainly a case of exhaustion with regards to the constant news flow coming out of Washington, the tariffs, what is going on geopolitically in the Middle East, and investors are just for the moment ignoring it.

And obviously, as the index is pushing higher, it is sucking in more and more of the bears who are being forced to reallocate back into equities. So, it is difficult, but there are clearly a lot of concerns that still remain out there and then, obviously on top of all that we have got seasonality, usually this is, the latter half of June and the next couple of months seasonally, usually the pretty much the worst part of the year for markets.

Which have come back into India, are they a function of just the weakness in the dollar index and do you think it will continue?
Jonathan Schiessl: Yes, I mean, if you look at ETF flows, obviously they have been very positive coming into India and into emerging markets as a whole. Certainly, the move we are seeing from global and US investors to broaden out their global portfolios to not just be US plus a little bit of other stuff and certainly we are seeing that happening and there is quite a bit of money coming out and searching for homes and EM is certainly benefited from that and India remains a big beneficiary of that.

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