New Delhi: As the tariffs imposed by the United States on India haunt some of the Indian businesses, Jefferies’ Christopher Wood advised the investors to exude confidence in the domestic market. Wood is the global head of the international brokerage firm.
He termed the 50% Trump tariffs on Indian products as “somewhat unusual”. He hoped that in the near future President Trump would take back his decision, which is not in America’s interest.” Notably, the top official of Jefferies made the comments at a time when Indian markets are experiencing relentless foreign investor outflows.
“GREED & fear would not view the previously discussed 50% tariff with the US as a reason to sell Indian equities. Rather, it is probably a reason to buy them since India is one country in the world where it pays to stand up to Donald,” Wood stated in his ‘GREED & Fear’ report.
While backing the Indian market despite global challenges and Trump’s tariffs, Wood said the Indian equities underperformed in around the last one year as the stocks were ‘overvalued’ and “a heavy schedule of equity issuance.”
The Jefferies official expressed confidence in the Indian market in the long run.
He also raised concerns over Trump’s stance towards world’s largest economies. Wood warned that Trump’s policies could lead to Brics members – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa to move towards de-dollarisation.
While mentioning that Jefferies has maximum times maintained a bullish stance on India in Greed & Fear’s various portfolios, Wood wrote: “This is not a great surprise tactically, since Korea has ripped higher on value-up while Taiwan has of late been celebrating the massive capex spending by hyperscalers (the leading global tech companies currently on a spending binge). For India the problem has been high valuations and, most importantly, massive equity supply. This is why we have of late been running only a marginal overweight in India in the Asia Pacific ex-Japan relative-return portfolio.”