Chris Wood, in his Greed & Fear weekly newsletter, said he was pleasantly surprised at the Budget which was almost devoid of vote-buying populism despite coming just ahead of the Lok Sabha elections later in the year. In Wood s global long-only portfolio, the investment in HDFC Bank will be reduced by two percentage points, while the investments in Axis Bank and TSMC will be increased by one percentage point each.
Chris Wood said the best performing stock in Jefferies’ India portfolio is up 309% year-to-date and the worst performing in China is down 55%. Such contrasting performances would normally be a signal to buy China and sell India, he said.
Wood said when the S&P500 index collapsed 28.5 per cent in four days, and by 20.5 per cent on October 19, 1987 alone, the treasury bond market subsequently staged a classic flight-to-safety rally.
Wood said there is also growing interest in offering China as a special asset class of its own with the rest of the emerging markets managed separately. Creating an emerging markets (EM) basket excluding China would benefit markets like India and Taiwan as China s underperformance would weigh down the EM index returns. China has the highest country weightage on the EM indices.