BJP chief strategist Amit Shah no novice in market intelligence

BJP President and party chief strategist Amit Shahs political acumen is now well known but little is known about his love for the markets and his ability to take investment risks to maximise gains for himself.

It now comes across Shah's love for blue chips and his constant engagement with stock markets has been one of the reasons that he is now being considered for a deeper financial role in new Modi government by being the next finance minister of the country. Though portfolios are still to be distributed, buzz of his role in the Finance Ministry is doing rounds for some time now.

Shah's affidavits to the Election Commission reflect his love for blue chips and his active participation in stock markets that have already reached historic highs maximising returns for investors.

Amit Shah's key investments include stock worth Rs 2 crore of Reliance Industries, Rs 1.4 crore in L&T Finance, and Rs 1 crore in Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).

Smaller investments include Rs 97 lakh in UltraTech, Rs 83 lakh in Hindustan Lever and Rs 65 lakh in Maruti. There are smaller investments in unlisted companies also.

In all, his portfolio comprises 193 stocks, most of them large-cap and mid-caps.

Out of his total net worth of Rs 30.49 crore, as declared in his affidavit with his nominations for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the holdings in listed firms were to the tune of Rs 17.56 crore as on March 22, 2019 out of total net worth of over rs 30 crore.

Most of his possessions outside share investments is in immovable assets. Out of this, Shah has inherited shares worth Rs 10.05 crores in 2013.

Though his love for share investments comes across clearly in the affidavits, Shah has remained conservative in terms of choice of stocks. He has largely invested in large-cap and mid-caps stocks such as RIL, TCS, L&T and ITC that have consistently given good returns and face less market volatility. On a long term these scrips provide good returns that has also helped Shah to increase in gains from shares over the years.

The gains can be seen from increase in Shah's value of shares between 2017 and 2019. During the period, the value of his stock holding appreciated by over Rs 4 crore from a level of Rs 13.17 crore declared in his earlier affidavit for Rajya Sabha election. This despite 102 of the 193 stocks in Shah's portfolio delivered negative returns between March 2017 and March 2019, delivering a Rs 1.28 crore

Though value of his existing stock holding has grown, between 2017-19 Shah made fresh investments in 33 stocks including his investment in 1 lakh shares of L&T Finance Holdings valued at Rs 1.46 crore as of March 22, 2019. The other investments were in L&T, Infosys, Bajaj Electrical and Aditya Birla Cement.

He has large portfolio under which he has invested a substantial amount in picking up shares of MRF, Maruti Suzuki, UltraTech Cement, Vedanta, Grasim Ind , DCM Ltd, TV18 Broadcast, Castrol India, Bharat Forge, Bharat Petroleum, REC Ltd, Vodafone Idea Mahindra & Mahindra, Procter & Gamble, Hindustan Unilever, Torrent Power, GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare, Nestle India, Trent, Colgate Palmolive among others.

In addition to his love for blue chip listed stocks, Shah has also picked up about 80 unlisted stocks, the value of which remains unchanged since 2017.

--IANS

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