Profile of Indian Stock Markets Vis-a-Vis Other Asian Markets

The Indian stock markets shows better performance against its Asian counterparts in terms of stock returns, growth rate and opportunity for investment. At first, this is corroborated with the correlation of stock returns of India with five other Asian countries as there exists a very feeble correlation between the Indian markets and Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan. Comparatively higher correlation was found between the Indian and the Korean markets, which seemed to have weakened in the short run. Hence it can be said that the Indian markets offer better risk diversification portfolios to international investors looking for investment in the Asia Pacific region. Besides, Indian markets also reigned supreme over other Asiatic markets with an astonishing compounded annual growth rate in stock market returns, both in the short as well as long run. However, the Indian markets, in terms of the volatility of its weekly returns, were similar to it other Asian counterparts, showing features of platykurtic distribution which signifies the normal distribution of stock returns in Indian stock market. It is positive to see that the last six months, showed signs of recovery, with the market variations negatively skewed in most countries signifying an economic upturn and concentration of returns towards higher values and increasing stock market returns.