Tilted portfolio towards US firms at cheaper valuations

Arindam Mandal, head of global equities at Marcellus Investment Managers, tells Ananya Grover inan interview manages the group’s Global Compounders Fund with ₹300 crore AUM as of October end. Excerpts:

- Arindam Mandal

What region is your portfolio tilted towards given high valuations in the US?

We typically focus on US and European listed equities; it’s a developed market fund largely. US for last three years has been kind of a lopsided story around AI. Towards late last year, we looked at the valuations, and thought let’s take a step back,as some of the valuations are probably little more extended. We lookedinto the other parts of the market and found that there are things trading at a much cheaper multiple. So, we tilted the portfolio towards that,good companies having some cyclical issues. We understand that in near-term there might not be catalysts for these names but typicallywelookforlongerterm, that iswherewe tried to position our portfolio.The portfolio is not that top heavy, if you think about what S&P or Nasdaq. We don’t have Nvidia and Teslas of the world. We are in some of the mega-caps but notin the pricey ones or where we are concerned on the cycle.

What macro factors are you watching for?