Chris Wood launches India-dedicated equity portfolio with 16 stocks

 The portfolio includes marquee stocks such as ICICI Bank, HDFC, Bajaj Finance, and Reliance Industries

After hiking stake earlier this year to Indian equities to 14 percentage points (ppt) in his Asia ex-Japan long-only portfolio, Christopher Wood, global head of equity strategy at Jefferies has launched India long-only equity portfolio with 16 stocks, which include marquee stocks such as ICICI Bank, HDFC, Bajaj Finance, Reliance Industries (RIL), ONGC, Maruti Suzuki India, Tata Steel, and Jubilant FoodWorks.

India always had a significant representation in GREED & fear’s long-only Asia ex-Japan portfolio, launched nearly 19 years ago at the end of the third quarter of 2002 (Q3-2002). The move comes despite the Indian equities nearing all-time high levels and rich valuations.

“This is certainly not a perfect time to start an Indian portfolio since the Sensex is near an all-time high though, for that matter, so are many other stock markets. Still GREED & fear remains convinced that India is at the start of a new housing cycle after a seven-year downturn, after the mother of all consolidations in the developer industry, which is why there will be a 17 per cent weight in the property sector,” Wood wrote in his weekly note to investors, GREED & fear.

This portfolio, Wood said, will be domestic demand focused, though it will have a decent energy weighting to hedge, in part at least, the obvious risk of a higher oil price on Indian financials and other interest rate-sensitive sectors.