IAIP’s 5th Annual Forecast Survey FY14

Continuing with the tradition for the fifth consecutive year, IAIP conducted the Annual Forecast Survey in the month of March. The survey tried to gauge the outlook of finance and investment professionals across the asset classes for the coming financial year. Like in the past this year to the response was overwhelming with nearly 650 people filling in the online survey. The participants came from various segments of financial services industry viz. asset management companies, brokerages, insurance companies, banks, private wealth managers, financial advisors, distributors, stock & commodity exchanges, regulators and others. The results of the Survey were presented by Jayesh Gandhi, CFA, Director IAIP, at the IAIP’s 5th Annual Forecast Event (covered in another post) on April 2nd 2013.

The key findings are as follows:

• More than 43% of the respondents expect Equities will give the best returns in FY14 followed by fixed income 23%; whereas only 7% believe that Gold will be the best asset class.
• 48% of them believe that India’s real GDP growth will range be between 5-6% whereas 37% expect it to be between 6-7%.
• 10-year G-sec yield is expected to decline with 55% of the respondents expecting it to remain between 7-8%.
• 69% believe that crude (Brent) will range between USD 90-110 per barrel with bias towards the lower range.
• Gold is expected to maintain a declining trend remaining between USD 1400-1600 according to 43% respondents.
• Rupee/ Dollar is expected to remain within a broad range of INR 52-56 by the end of FY14.
• The most important driver for Indian equities over the next 12 months would be government policy actions and economic reforms according to 36% respondents followed by elections and politics.
• NDA-led coalition found favour in the 2014 elections with 54.3% of the responses.

Contributions from: Kunal Sabnis, CFA and Sitaraman Iyer, both IAIP Volunteers