Investors in Indian stock markets are hoping for a continuation of the relief rally on Saturday, following the spectacular rally on Wall Street on Friday. European stocks too rose on Friday, but gave up some of their gains towards the close, reflecting the cautious mood among investors.

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Back home, market gurus are advising investors to start accumulating stocks, but nobody is sticking his or her neck out on whether the market is anywhere close to bottoming out.

Given the ferocity of the fall over the last couple of weeks and the general mood of panic globally, markets could swing wildly in the near future with occasional relief rallies.

A key thing to watch out for would be the developments in the $9-trillion US corporate debt market. CNBC.com’s finance editor Jeff Cox writes that interest rates on the lowest-rated companies have spiked and default rates could climb.

Marketwatch.com’s Sunny Oh writes quoting market experts many firms in industries like airlines and energy could go underwater due to travel restrictions and cities and states shut down sporting, cultural and entertainment events. The oil price war started by Saudi Arabia and Russia is further hurting many energy companies.

Some experts are predicting a 2008-like situation in the credit market if investors try to pull out money from bond funds invested in corporate debt.

If that happens, it could have a cascading effect on other segments of the financial markets as well as fund managers incurring losses in bond funds would sell other holdings to raise cash.

Simon Powell of Jefferies is bearish on global equity markets and feels there is still some downside left. He told CNBC-TV18 that the Coronavirus pandemic has hit at a time when global markets were both overvalued and over-leveraged. He expects consumption to take a big hit given weak sentiment world, and that the global economy could be headed for recession.

Morgan Stanley’s Ridham Desai opines that sentiment has gone below the lows of 2008 and valuations are their lows of 2008. He is advising investors with a 12-month view to start buying stocks though it is hard to say if the sell-off in the market is almost done with. He says that price to book is a more reliable valuation parameter in these times as the earnings outlook is highly uncertain.

Mark Mobius of Mobius Capital Partner too feels it is a good time to be accumulating stocks as valuations have become attractive. He told CNBC-TV18 that in times of panic like these, the recovery too is usually very fast.

Despite attractive valuations, investors may not be in a hurry to buy. For one, most of them would have suffered significant losses over the last few weeks, and may lack the confidence to invest meaningful sums.

Positions of many HNIs are said to have been squared up on Friday as they were unable to put up the additional margins resulting from the steep erosion in stock prices.

Already, participation from high net worth individuals and retail investors in equities has been quite tepid of late, brokers say. Much of the retail money coming into the stock market is through the mutual fund route. This is unlike during the times of previous such crashes in 2001 and 2008 when many retail investors were directly investing in the stock market.