Future of “sin stocks” viz tobacco, liquor or gambling: In many parts of the world, sin items have been used to build infrastructure and tourism. Create a responsible industry where excessiveness of any consumption be it alcohol, be it tobacco, be it gambling is actually restricted and allowed in moderation. That way we will be able to develop tourism and fund our infrastructure as well.

Earnings reported by Banks: Whatever numbers came out were obviously shocking to the street and the analyst community by virtue of this divergence but at the same time we must remember that all NPA which are provided for, are not necessarily written off from a recovery point of view. There is always a possibility to liquidate assets and recover some portion of your loan.

Market Share of NBFCs post PSB recapitalisation: NBFCs will have agility on their side and their ability to create niche in certain areas where banking capital will find it difficult to compete by virtue of various restrictions. This kind of NBFCs I believe will continue to flourish but in the past we had seen that every single NBFCs, whether it was in housing finance or automobile finance or consumer finance or SME financing, were getting elevated valuations. Now the men will be separated from boys.

Housing Finance: The market will differentiate between companies which are going out in financing individual borrowers versus guys who are financing real estate developers. It will be safer to be in those NBFCs which are focused on financing individual borrowers rather than property developers.

High Oil Prices & Fiscal Space: It is very difficult to predict oil prices but global consensus is that oil should be kept at $60 a barrel and over a period of time, it should start moving lower as other parts of renewable energy starts coming into play. The government does have a challenge on the fiscal side because on one side they are committed to fiscal deficit at 3.2% of GDP; on the other side, due to GST, there are some complications related to tax recovery. On the third side, they will definitely get supported by expansion of tax base which happen with demonetisation as well as GST. So, my guess is that we will have to wait a little bit to see how this fiscal maths evolve.

Japan Visit: There is extreme positivity about India in Japan.At some point of time, they all believe there will be a democratic quad which is US, India, Japan and Australia which will come together to take on the might of China. The number of questions which Japanese distributors had asked on India and Indian economic policy shows their deep understanding and commitment to India. We will continue to see greater flows from Japan towards India both on foreign direct investment as well as portfolio flows side.