Published on 28/08/2025 09:51 PM
Kela: In 35 years of my investing career, whenever we have had this kind of blip in the market and we know that the event is not going to last forever, I think this is when we get opportunities to really buy companies we like. So typically, for a person like me, I keep my list ready, and I keep some prices in mind. If those stocks—whether they belong to this category or are collateral damage because of the market mood—that is where you get opportunities to really invest money.Q: But let me play devil’s advocate just for a second here. You said if it prolongs to, say, a year and there’s still no trade deal, then you’ll have to reassess. But let’s say this impasse continues for three to six months, because the rhetoric from the US side is very strong right now—if it persists for three to six months, will you have to reassess expectations of an earnings revival? Because that is really what investors and the market have been waiting for so long.Kela: There are lots of ifs and buts. It is your opinion versus my opinion, or XYZ’s opinion. I’m just saying, right now we all only have opinions, right? My personal sense, as I was saying, is that because this has been going on for a long period of time, wherever we could actually prepone our exports to America, we have already done more than 50% of what we normally do in the first four or five months of the current year.What I’m trying to say is that many sectors like gems and jewellery, textiles, or footwear may have seen exports getting preponed because of this uncertainty, both from a buyer’s as well as a seller’s perspective.The other thing is that the market is assuming this is a 50% duty. It’s not as simple as that. A major portion of our exports are exempt—maybe around 50%. On the other 50%, if you analyse—for example, on $13 billion of gems and jewellery, you have only 5% value addition. It is not representing gems and jewellery in that sense. It’s not represented anywhere in the Nifty or broader market. Our total footwear exports to America are $2 billion. Now, don’t you think that with this excise duty cut and the current mood of “Make in India,” we can consume an additional $2 billion of footwear in this country of 145 crore people?NewsLive TVMarketPopular CategoriesCalculatorsTrending NowLet's Connect with CNBCTV 18Network 18 Group :©TV18 Broadcast Limited. All rights reserved.