How to profit from small caps

Three small-cap fund managers tell us the outlook for small caps, how they pick small caps for their funds and what their most precious small-cap investing lessons are

Now that you have the lists on promising small caps from the cover story of this issue, you may be all set to start your research. To help you further, we spoke with fund managers of three small-cap funds:

•  Anupam Tiwari, Axis Small Cap Fund
• Harish Bihani, ICICI Prudential Smallcap Fund
• Samir Rachh, Nippon India Small Cap Fund The small-cap funds managed by them have combined assets of over 34,000 crore as of July 2022.
• We asked them the following questions:
•  What's your near-term outlook for the market, especially the small-cap segment? (See answers under subhead 'Market outlook')
• How do you pick winning small caps for your fund? How do you avoid the wealth-destroying ones? (See answers under subhead 'Investing in small caps')
•  What are your most precious lessons when it comes to small-cap investing? (See answers under subhead 'Most precious lessons')

The answers to these questions won't just tell you how to pick small caps but also tell you what not to do and what to keep in mind. So, overall, this is a complete wisdom package to aid you in your small-cap research. So, let's wait no more and start.

'We believe H2 is likely to be better for the equity markets than the months gone by'

Market outlook

Markets have been digesting one bad news after another to the point that pessimism was engrained into the investor psyche. June and July saw a bevy of 'less negative' news hitting investors' screens. The pessimism quickly turned into optimism or what we call as 'oversold' markets in trader terms. The sharp bounce-back was a result of this.