Jefferies’ Chris Wood adds Axis Bank, midcap stock to India portfolio

Expressing confidence in India’s third largest private sector lender, Jefferies’ Global Head of Equity Strategy Christopher Wood has added Axis Bank to his India Long-only portfolio. Besides, midcap stock Thermax Limited will also be a part of it. The weight of stocks will be 5% and 6%, respectively.

Axis Bank is also a part of his Global Long-only portfolio with 4% weight and Asia ex-Japan long-only thematic portfolio.

Meanwhile, Wood has removed ICICI Lombard General Insurance and Maruti Suzuki India from his India Long-Only portfolio and reduced the investments in HDFC Bank Limited and Reliance Industries Limited by 1 percentage point, the May edition of ‘Greed & Fear’ report said. Wood’s India Long-only portfolio comprises 18 stocks from financials, energy, real estate, infrastructure, transport, logistics and power equipment sectors.

The stocks in his India Long-only portfolio include ICICI Bank, Bajaj Finance, SBI Life Insurance Company, HDFC Life Insurance Company, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone, Larsen & Toubro and DLF, among others.


The Jefferies analyst has also increased the weight of his India Long-only portfolio, which has come at the expense of Thailand. He has reduced his ‘overweight’ stance on Thailand by 1%, the report said.


Global Long-only Portfolio
Besides Axis Bank, Wood’s Global Long-only portfolio has 4 other stocks of Indian companies viz. Reliance Industries, Godrej Properties Limited, ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank.

The weights assigned to ICICI Bank and Axis Bank are 5% each while 4% to the remaining ones. "The investments in HDFC Life, BNP Paribas and Schlumberger in the Global Long-only Equity Portfolio will be removed and replaced by investments in Axis Bank, TSMC [Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited] and China's BYD. The investment in Samsung Electronics will be increased by one percentage point by shaving the investment in Total Energies," the report said.

Asia ex-Japan Long-only Thematic Portfolio
Stocks in this portfolio include Reliance Industries, HDFC Life Insurance, Macrotech Developers Godrej Properties, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, Bajaj Finance and Larsen & Toubro.

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