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    HDFC AMC offloads winners of first leg of rally, turns to next lot

    Synopsis

    The fund house reduced exposure in at least 79 companies, but bought into some 99 others.

    Prashant-Jain-1---BCCL
    HDFC AMC sold over 10 lakh shares each in Tejas Network, Aarti Industries, Jindal Steel & Power, Tata Motors, SpiceJet, Aurobindo Pharma, The Indian Hotels and The Federal Bank during the month.
    HDFC Asset Management, India’s second largest mutual fund house by assets, lightened positions in the bluest of blue chips in June as the benchmark equity indices gained over 7.50 per cent.

    The fund house, instead, lapped up shares of select PSUs and those of telecom, chemicals, life insurers and power companies ahead of June quarter earnings.

    Data showed the fund house offloaded some shares in Reliance Industries (41.56 lakh shares), Infosys (22.90 lakh shares) and L&T (19.49 lakh shares) and sold between 1.50 lakh to 16 lakh shares each in ITC, HDFC Bank and TCS after these shares rose 40-110 per cent from their March lows. They are all big winners in the first leg of the market rally from the March lows.

    Overall, the fund house reduced exposure in at least 79 companies, but bought into some 99 others.

    The AMC’s investment team led by market veteran Prashant Jain seems to have turned focus on the stocks that were out of favour in the first leg of the rally. They acquired 50 lakh to 1.50 crore shares in the country’s biggest lender by asset SBI, metal and mining major Vedanta, Coal India, telecom major Bharti Airtel and utility players like PowerGrid and REC.

    Its other major buys in June included NTPC, PFC, Gujarat Pipavav, Orient Cement, HPCL, ICICI Bank, SBI Cards, Bharti Infratel, Cipla, Engineers India, IndusInd Bank, among others. The fund house added 7 to 43 lakh additional shares of these companies.

    Some analysts have been betting on select economy-linked sectors of late. “We like beaten-down economy-linked sectors like capital goods, construction, utilities, metals and oil and gas,” says Rusmik Oza, Executive Vice President, Head of Fundamental Research, Kotak Securities.

    “Most of these economy-related sectors will report very poor numbers in FY21 due to Covid-19 and lockdown. However, the low base and economic recovery will lead to very high growth in FY22. From a FY22 perspective, most of these economy-related sectors look attractive,” he said.

    Elsewhere, the fund house doubled holding in TCI Express, Manappuram Finance, Container Corporation of India, JB Chemicals and SBI Life Insurance.

    Other largecaps and midcaps the fund house accumulated during the month included Mishra Dhatu Nigam (7.48 lakh shares), DLF (6.13 lakh shares) and Mahindra & Mahindra (5.63 shares), HCL Technologies (3.61 lakh shares) and Nestle (8,304 shares). Kotak Mahindra Bank, Axis Bank and Bajaj Finserv also drew interest of the AMC.

    Vinod Nair, Head of Research at Geojit Financial Services, says the second half of the financial year is likely to become volatile with positive bias. He is positive on chemicals, pharmaceuticals, FMCG and IT players.

    On the sell side, HDFC AMC sold over 10 lakh shares each in Tejas Network, Aarti Industries, Jindal Steel & Power, Tata Motors, SpiceJet, Aurobindo Pharma, The Indian Hotels and The Federal Bank during the month.

    It completely exited Adani Power, Bharat Forge, Havells India and SH Kelkar, data available with Ace Mutual Fund showed.

    APL Apollo Tubes, Can Fin Homes, CDSL, Equitas Holdings, Escorts, Vodafone Idea, Wheels India and RIL’s partly paid up equity shares (Rights Issue) were among the stocks the fund house entered afresh.



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    Download The Economic Times News App to get Daily Market Updates & Live Business News.

    Subscribe to The Economic Times Prime and read the Economic Times ePaper Online.and Sensex Today.

    Top Trending Stocks: SBI Share Price, Axis Bank Share Price, HDFC Bank Share Price, Infosys Share Price, Wipro Share Price, NTPC Share Price

    ...more
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