after all the panic and anxiety in the financial markets one thing is clear the banking sector and depositors will not be allowed to suffer by governments the world over sure the shareholders ceos and senior management of banks may suffer however the current scenario where people are rushing to take out money and put it under their mattress is clearly unjustified yes your money is safe with banks even with icici bank nothing is going to happen to your deposits at the same time there is no denying the fact that the world economy is headed for recessionary times in such a situation there is no direct answer with regard to stock market investing it would be much better to take a bottom up stockbystock and industrybyindustry approach to investing cyclical and commodity stocks were in a dot com like frenzy we could see declining profits and stock prices in such stocks despite the steep fall already in place to illustrate the profits of sesa goa have gone up around 200 times in eight years from 2000 to 2008 on a volume growth of just about three times these profits could tumble down equally fast were iron ore prices to ease rapidly the baltic freight index has fallen by more than 85 from peak the profitability of a lot of companies in the commodity and cyclical space will see a severe decline however not every company which has seen its stock price decline is headed for difficult times the traditional defensives like fmcg and pharmaceutical shares select banks with good credit quality utilities like city gas distribution defencerelated psus etc would make good purchases at current market prices a lot of consumers of commodities will benefit from the fall in commodity prices for example twowheeler companiesancillaries will see margin expansions as well as price cuts for the end product on account of weak commodity prices companies like castrol or paper products which have raw materials linked to crude oil could see easing of margin pressures inflation will come down sooner rather than later leading to easing of the interest rates the selling in a lot of it stocks seems to have been overdone especially looking at the declining exchange rate all in all a good time for valueoriented buying of good quality businesses time to stay away from businesses with weak fundamentals the author is chairman parag parikh financial advisory services