Defensive sector weight in Nifty lowest in 15 years

Underperforms in falling market for first time in over 20 years

- KRISHNA KANT

Traditional safe-haven sectors, such as fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), IT services, and pharma, are not working for equity investors in the current market selloff. These three sectors have underperformed the broader market during the downturn, leading to a decline in their weighting in the benchmark Nifty 50 index.

As a result, the combined weighting of these sectors in the Nifty 50 index has fallen to a 15-year low of 25.3 per cent, down from 27.4 per cent at the end of March last year and 37.6 per cent at the end of March 2014. The previous low for defensive sectors was in March 2010, when their weighting in the index had dropped to 22.4 per cent.