I would like to compare the constituents of Nifty between 2003 and now. Here are some statistics:
- In 2003, there were eight companies belonging to FMCG sector in Nifty, namely, Britannia, Colgate, Dabur, Glaxo Consumer, HUL, ITC, Nestle and Tata Tea. Today there are only two companies from this sector in Nifty, namely, HUL and ITC. Just to add, ITC was only in cigarettes at that time. Today it is in cigarettes, biscuits and soap/shampoos too.
- In 2003, there were six companies belonging to Pharma sector in Nifty, namely, Cipla, Dr Reddy, Glaxo, Novartis, Ranbaxy and Sun Pharma. Today there are only three, namely Cipla, Ranbaxy and Sun Pharma.
- These two examples show that when a particular sector has a very high representation in an index, it collectively underperforms the index. Individual companies like Colgate, Dabur, Glaxo Consumer and Nestle might have outperformed the index but the bigger players like HUL and ITC clearly underperformed the index. Today sectors that dominate Nifty are
- Finance with seven companies representing the sector in Nifty
- Power with five companies in generation/transmission/distribution and five in equipment.
- Metals with six companies in aluminium/copper, steel, and iron ore.
- In 2003, there were total 21 different sectors that were represented in the Nifty constituents (if banks and housing finance, petrochemicals and refineries, auto 2 wheelers and 4 wheelers, steel and aluminium, are considered separate. If they are combined, the sectors would reduce to 17). Some of them included Hotels (Indian Hotels), Shipping (Shipping Corporation of India), Chemicals (Tata Chemicals) and Media (Zee). Today there is no representation of these sectors in Nifty (ITC is more of FMCG now then hotels). Today the number of sectors represented in Nify have reduced to 19 only (if you consider oil exploration, gas transmission and refineries, steel, aluminium and metals, banks and housing finance, separate. If these are combined, the sectors would reduce to 14 only). This clearly shows that many big companies from a particular sector has been put in the index. The examples are
- Finance where HDFC, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, SBI, ICICI Bank, Reliance Capital and PNB all are part of Nifty.
- Power Equipment where ABB, BHEL, Siemens, L&T and Suzlon are all part of Nifty.
- Telecommunication services where BHARTI, RCOM, Idea and TataCommunications are all part of Nifty and if BSNL lists then it too will be included.
- Power where RINFRA, RPOWER, NTPC, Tata Power and JSPL are all included.
- Metals where Hindalco, Nalco, SAIL, Tata Steel, JSPL and Sterlite are all included.
- From the above examples, it seems NSE should put a cap on number of companies representing a particular sector in Nifty.
- Surprisingly, developed nation like the US does not have a single power company in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
- There is no representation of Media/Advertising, Chemicals/Paints, Retail, Insurance (there is no seperately listed entity to represent this sector), Transport (Railway/Airlines), Textiles, Paper, Auto Ancillaries (including tyres), Logistics, Hospitals, Restaurants and Consumer Durables in Nifty.
We can conclude from this that
investing in Nifty is not a diversified way of investing in the whole Indian economy. It is better to chose a broader index like S&P CNX 500 or BSE500.
1 comment:
Interesting piece. But there is a lot more the deciding index constituent that just a simplistic industry analysis. Still a nice take.
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