"Be wary when valuations run up too much"

With over 28 years of experience in the financial market, Venugopal Manghat, HSBC Mutual Fund's chief investment officer, takes us through his professional journey. In the interview, he talks about the early days of his career, navigating the dynamic landscape of the financial industry, to the current role of overseeing the equity investing division at the fund house. Here is the edited transcript of the interview. How did you start your professional journey? While doing my management course, I was quite fascinated with what was happening in the country then. This was after the bull run that we saw in 1992. The beginning of foreign multinational research companies getting established in India with cutting-edge work was fascinating, and I wanted to be part of that industry. At that time, it was unclear exactly what it was or what it entailed, but that attraction led me to the research world. I looked for a job and got into a research team with a small private broking entity that was advising a large number of retail investors and, later, a couple of large institutions on the public side. Later, in 1995, I got an opportunity to join Tata Asset Management as a management trainee. I got into the dealing division and was part of a two-member team. We set up a team and got the brokers to empanelled on equity and fixed income sides. Later, when schemes started to roll out, we started deploying money in money markets and equities. So, that was the beginning; my fascination with research got me into the capital market and the stock market in general. How did you rise from being a dealer to a research analyst? In equities, that transformation happens rarely. But, in my case, given that I had spent almost a couple of years on the research side working with a small team across sectors, that experience really helped. In that short stint at Tata Asset Management, in my spare time,