India, Feb. 1 -- The last calendar year was undoubtedly volatile for equity markets. The benchmark BSE Sensex reached up to almost 39,000 in August 2018 before correcting all the way to around 33,500 in October 2018. The latter wasn't even the lowest point for the year which came about early in the year in March 2018 at around 32,500. And over the last three months, the Sensex has moved in a very narrow range of about 1,000-1,500 points. But what now-at above 36,000 at 17 times forward price-to-earnings (PE) ratio is the Sensex still richly valued? Some argue that retail investors' money coming in via mutual funds has held up stock prices beyond its fundamental value.
If you look beyond the benchmark indices, a similar story of high valua...