Over the 24 months of 2016/2017, blessings in many forms, moderate commodity prices, low yields worldwide, a reforming Modi government with high expectations, a sense of optimism on the US markets pervading the Indian stock exchanges drove the BSE Sensex up by 38%

The IMF still pegs GDP growth at 7.4% in 2018-2019 in the latest World Economic Outlook (April ‘18), which would be by far the highest growth rate of all major economies (including China projected at 6.6% in 2018)

In its forecast, IMF highlights strong private consumption, implementation of the national goods and services tax (GST) since July '17 and further structural reforms expected to take hold in the medium term to ease labor market rigidities, reduce infrastructure bottlenecks, and improve educational outcomes

Since February 1 ’18, the performance of our simple ETF portfolio reflects harsher market realities – possibly because earnings per share of Sensex constituents only went up by 16% (2016-proj.2018) and private capital investment remained sluggish  – but certainly because worldwide market uncertainties bring the emerging markets in its wake