New Delhi, Sept. 29 -- If the upheaval around H-1B visas and hand-wringing over the fate of India's IT majors has underlined anything from an investing standpoint, it is this-sectoral tailwinds matter.

You can be a champion swimmer, but if the currents are flowing hard against you, it is the ocean and not your skill which will decide your fate. If an industry faces regulatory hostility, operational disruption or other major headwinds, even the most well-run company cannot prevent share prices from cratering.

Benjamin Graham, the original guru of value investing, once remarked that the art of investment was often believed to lie "first in the choice of those industries that are most likely to grow in the future and then in identifying th...