``Worst seems to be behind us, be it the Asian crisis, the domestic economy or the political situation. Based on these factors, we expect the Sensex to head towards the 6,000 mark by March 2000,'' hsbc securities, the broking arm of HSBC group said in "India-100" report covering top 100 companies.Apart from this, it expects the markets to move up due to improved earnings (profits), expected to grow by around 21 per cent, re-rating of stocks due to restructuring undertaken by various companies and improved liquidity through massive inflow of funds by foreign institutional investors.

HSBC feels that the current rally is different from the rallies in the past. ``The market returns for July-December, for each of the last five years, have been negative, averaging at about 10 per cent. We, however believe it is different this time around,'' the report said.

Last year, it was doom and gloom across Asia. But this year, we prefer Asia to Latin America and within this region Taiwan, India, Thailand, Malaysia and Korea look good.

On the preference for Indian markets, it said `India has a beta-a key indicator on the volatility of markets- of 0.5, has 27 per cent of cyclicals and has low correlation with the US markets. On the portfolio strategy, HSBC Securities said given the extremely bullish view on the market, almost all the top 100 stocks would offer positive absolute returns.

However, it said re-rating and earnings growth would be the key drivers of share prices with return on capital employed (roce) extremely important for share price performance. From the earnings growth perspective, HSBC feels that cyclicals would perform better than the overall India-100 (the top 100 companies tracked by HSBC). The probability of attaining higher growth is more in domestic cyclicals, it added.