World is cold to India's long-term story: Samir Arora

The uncertain global environment is making Samir Arora of Helios Capital take a cautious line. The US economy may be a shadow of its former self and a double-dip recession looks increasingly real. But to him, it’s the European debt crisis that one should be more worried about in terms of its potential implications.

Arora thinks the long-term India story doesn’t have too many takers as the world is simply not interested. Lingering policy concerns are another area to look at. “For too long we have said to everybody that we are very good over two or three or five year,” he said explaining further, “We have to earn it, but even if we say it is true, we have seen that the world has become much more short-term.”

He cited the example of the US market which is being mostly dominated by players with a short-term view. “We have seen that the world has become much more shorter-term and if you say that this is good for long-term investors, then I don’t think the world is interested in buying that logic because for two long, we have been saying that we will be very good over the next five years but we don’t have that kind of money in our market,” Arora pointed out.

He is equally disappointed that the world is waiting for too many cues to behave the way it is behaving. “The world is depending too much on small things. For example, in August the entire world waited for Bernanke and Obama to make their respective speeches,” he said.

So, Arora is of the view that picking stocks has become all the more difficult when there are so many imponderables. And he doesn’t blame investors for that.