Rewind 2018: Stocks at attractive valuations have failed to woo investors

Stock performance in 2018 has been polarised. Investors have piled on to the so-called growth stocks (typically, companies that consistently post superior growth in sales and profitability). This has resulted into soaring of valuations of such companies. The turmoil in the market has helped bring down valuations a bit. However, they remain away above their price-to-earnings (P/E) multiples seen in the past few years. For instance, Nestle India’s stock currently trades at 58 times its one-year forward earnings estimate. While the P/E is down from 63 times in March, it is way higher what the stock commanded in the past