Tag: christopher wood

Investors should be prepared for biggest inflation scare since 1980s

Friday, March 12, 2021
Christopher Wood, global head of equity strategy at Jefferies in his weekly note to investors, GREED & fear warned investors for the biggest inflation scare since the 1980s. “For now investors should be prepared for the biggest inflation scare since the early 1980s, and wait to see how the (US) Fed reacts. In the meantime, Treasury bonds are likely to sell off more, and cyclical stocks rally more, before any such tapering scare,” Wood said. That said, he believes that if inflation really does return on a longer-term basis, it would mean that equities and bonds would become positively correlated on the downside - that is they will both go down in price together. The return of inflation fears has been stoked again by the rise in commodity prices, especially oil, which has jumped over 90 percent from its March 13 level of $35 a barrel (bbl.) to around $70/bbl. now. Read more

Christopher Wood hiked allocation to Indian equities in his Asia Pacific relative-return portfolio

Friday, October 16, 2020
Christopher Wood, global head (equity strategy) at Jefferies in his latest note to investors, said that he has hiked allocation to Indian equities in his Asia Pacific ex-Japan relative-return portfolio by one percentage point and added two percentage points to the existing investment in HDFC in the Asia ex-Japan long-only portfolio. At 2x 12-month forward adjusted book, compared with a five-year average forward price-to-book ratio (P/BV) of 2.6x, Wood feels HDFC’s valuation remains attractive. Among Indian stocks, besides HDFC, Wood also holds Reliance Industries (RIL), Maruti Suzuki, SBI Life Insurance, ICICI Lombard General Insurance, DLF, and Cipla in his Asia ex-Japan thematic equity portfolio for long-only absolute-return investors. Read more