AN EMPIRICAL STUDY ON COMPARISON & FORECAST OF FMCG PERSONAL CARE STOCKS VS FMCG NIFTY

Purpose Fast moving consumer goods industry is moving fast on the secondary markets across the globe. However, diversified segments of the sector have varied performance at different countries. In India, this sector is growing rapid and is grabbing attention of all types of investors in the market. Hence, it is felt necessary to understand whether stocks listed in this segment are really defensive for long term investors or not and do they influence the whole indices or not. Methodology Current study is an exploratory study for which data is collected from eight personal care stocks listed on National Stock Exchange from 1stJanuary, 2015 till 18thSeptember, 2017 considering daily closing prices. A sample of 672 is considered for which statistical tools such as Pearson's correlation coefficient, covariance, price variance analysis, and augmented dickey fuller unit root test are applied. Further, to do a thirty week forecasting, to understand the quality of forecasting and seasonality, auto-regressive integrated moving average method and exponential smoothing process are applied. Findings Results indicate that two of the eight companies' stocks are highly divergent in nature and doesn't influence the indices movement. However, these two stocks are good for long term investors as they are traded at consistent price and deviation in price is also nominal during the study period. It is also observed that, there is no seasonality influence amongst selected stocks and trend is present for six out of eight stocks with some showing additive trend while others multiplicative. Value Advantageous for prospective investors to understand and select an appropriate company's stock for investment, based on the historical data assessment.