How Jhunjhunwala’s portfolio beat Nifty and Sensex on the first day without him

Ace stock market investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, popularly known as the Big Bull of Dalal Street, died during the weekend. The 62-year-old market maven, who had a big buy call on the India growth story for decades, had built a fortune by investing in the Indian public markets. He had also been dabbling in the private capital sphere lately, both as a part of a private equity and venture capital consortiums and as a contrarian businessman.

One of the last of his big punts was on the aviation sector where he co-founded a new airline, Akasa Air, even as pundits raised eyebrows on its viability given the high competition and the historical experience of the industry being a loss-making business proposition.

Nevertheless, he left a legacy with his stock market picks, one of the most widely followed portfolio in the country.

If we look at his portfolio where he held at least a 1% stake, he held stakes in 32 companies including tractor maker Escorts Kubota that he added to the basket last quarter.

The man, who made his mark with his big bet on Titan around two decades ago, continues to own that stock among several other long-term bets.

We looked at his pack to gauge how did they perform on the first day without Jhunjhunwala.

Out of the 32 stocks, two-thirds gained on Tuesday while the remaining ended in the red.

In total, his portfolio value rose a little over 1%, exceeding the 0.6-0.7% rise in the Sensex and Nifty.

The value of his holdings, along with stocks he held under his wife’s name, rose Rs 327 crore to Rs 32,223.5 crore on Tuesday.

Titan, Star Health & Allied Insurance, Metro Brands, Tata Motors and CRISIL were the five top stocks where the value of his holding exceeds Rs 1,000 crore each. Titan is the top draw with a value of Rs 11,184 crore.

Jhunjhunwala was particularly fond of Tata Group companies. At the time of his demise, he held stakes in at least five Tata stocks: Titan, Rallis, Tata Communications, Indian Hotels and Tata Motors.

Escorts Kubota, his most recent new stock pick, rose the most on Tuesday rocketing almost 10%.