Picking cold stocks and converting them to cool ones

Chirag Setalvad, Senior Fund Manager, Equities, HDFC Mutual Fund is a bottom-up investor. He looks for quality businesses with decent cash flows and run by honest management. His typical holding period ranges from three to ten years. Setalvad stays away from stocks that are glamorous, the 'hot stocks', which, according to him, produce poor returns in the long run. Instead, he prefers to stick with neglected sectors. Such sectors offer two distinct advantages: earnings pick up in the future and the low valuations take care of the downside.