Marc Faber does not think India’s stock market is cheap, even after the recent slide. “My view is that India has initiated a bear market and we will still go lower,” the editor and publisher of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report told Business Standard in a telephone interview. His number: another 20 per cent down from here.
He was careful to separate the economy from the market. “It has nothing to do with the economy,” he said. “The economy is doing well, but the stock market isn’t cheap enough for me to buy.” Indian shares are cheaper than they were in 2024, and the rupee-dollar relationship has changed since then, but neither fact moved him to start buying.
What could trigger it
Faber expects earnings to disappoint and weigh on sentiment. He also pointed to global liquidity, which still drives markets today but is growing more slowly than it once did.
Central banks, he said, cannot rescue the situation. They will try to print money, and they may succeed in lifting stocks for a spell. But he reminded the interviewer that the US began cutting short-term rates in October 2024, and long-term rates rose afterward. In inflation-adjusted terms, he expects stocks to fall. The same applies to India, where the market is down much more in dollar terms than in rupee terms.
The advice
Hold cash. Faber said that when everybody wants to speculate and expects their stocks or properties to rise, people forget how vulnerable markets are, including real estate, collectibles and fine wines. “If they go down, they can go down a lot.”
Asked whether the damage would arrive within six months, he would not commit to a timetable. It could be three months, six or nine. What he sees now is more risk on the downside than upside potential. He holds a bond portfolio himself, which he said may not be a great investment but could beat a stock portfolio that drops 30 per cent. Some markets that have already fallen hard may hold up better, he allowed, but it would be a fallacy to assume they rise if the US falls by 30 or 50 per cent.
He would not count on a rescue from emerging-market status either. Indonesia is one of the few places he called reasonably priced, with stocks down 30 per cent this year, though he does not see a big rally coming soon.
Faber is positive on precious metals over the long term but thinks the correction after the rally from 2024 to the start of 2026 has further to run. On crude oil, he said the solution to the Iran conflict is very complex and will take time, and that prices will more likely go up than down.
