Two stocks Kunal Bothra is betting on for next week

“Havells managed to close at the highest point of the day with the very feeble kind of a recovery in the markets in the second half. So that is an indication that the trends are quite strong,” says Kunal Bothra, kunalbothra.co.in

First week of the year seems like nothing exciting. Do you think this market would look like this in the New Year?
It has been a tough week, a tough start to 2023 so far because the markets had to grapple with a lot of volatility. I think the bigger part of the volatility was uncertainty because at one point in time, there was bit of positivity across the globe, and there was recovery across the Asian markets. There was some strategic recovery seen across the European markets; no major sell-off has happened to the US markets and that kept the market actually puzzled as to why the indices were struggling to hold up the critical support points.

Now, the only shining light which I would probably look out for in next week is the resilience of the midcap and smallcap stocks. So when you try to do a price-to-price comparison of the Bank Nifty, they have come back to their previous swing lows as at the end of December. But the midcap and the smallcap indices are up by a margin of 5% from their December lows. So, that is the only safety point or the shining point so far this week but other than that it has been a tough week to really ride into the markets.

What are your top picks when you are looking at the market?
So it will be more broad-based. I have two buy calls. These two stocks have been very strong outperformers in the second half of this week. The first one is Havells. The stock is looking extremely strong, in fact, I was quite enthused to see the stock being one of the better performers in Friday’s session when the markets were going through a very tough kind of a volatile downward trend. Havells managed to close at the highest point of the day with a very feeble kind of recovery in the markets in the second half. So that is an indication that the trends are quite strong. The fourth straight day of recovery for Havells would suggest a buy at 1225; immediate target stop loss could be at 1166.

The second one would be a buy on PFC. PFC and REC -- both these stocks have looked extremely strong from the PSU pack. You have seen some very good recovery, almost like a V-shaped recovery in PFC. That stock is also a buy for a target of 165 and a stop loss of 152.