In the last one week, India administered at an average 60 lakh doses a day, nearly double the rate in the week prior. On Monday last week, India administered more than 86 lakh jabs. That is equivalent to vaccinating almost 100 per cent of the Swiss population in one day, which is highly impressive, said Wood.
“The stated official goal is to have 200-220 million doses available each month from July with the aim to deliver 10 million jabs a day. If only half that amount is administered, it would be impressive. Predictably, the anti-Modi western media has been silent about these latest developments,” Wood said in his weekly
GREED & fear report last week.
He said the rapidly rising Covid-19 cases in Indonesia remains grim, but the India experience shows that the collapse in cases can be almost as rapid as the upward surge. Moreover, vaccination has also picked up in the island nation.
“Fortunately,
GREED & fear has remained overweight India throughout the second wave and will remain so. Still the weighting in Indonesia in the Asia Pacific ex-Japan relative-return portfolio will be cut by 50bps this week with the money moved to China,” said Wood.
Wood also removed
from the Asia ex-Japan long-only portfolio and replaced it by an investment in .
Bitcoin: Time to disinvest?
Wood maintained his allocation in Bitcoin at 5 per cent “for now” despite rising risks and sharply dropping price. Thanks to some harsh action by China, including a crackdown on mining rigs, Bitcoin has plummeted to $30,000 mark.
“China does not want any competition when it launches the digital renminbi nationally, most likely in the fourth quarter of this year. This will give the central government total transparency on its citizens’ savings and spending habits,” said Wood.
“Certainly, the decentralised aspect of blockchain technology, which is so appealing to libertarians opposed to fiat currencies as state monopolies, is the complete antithesis of China’s collectivist system. The PRC clearly understands this. This is certainly a far more important issue to Beijing than the carbon generating aspects of Bitcoin mining.”
Jefferies sees potential in the technology on which Bitcoin is based and some commentary coming from US shows, it may gain more validity.
“By creating a parallel universe to conventional commercial banking, is not only a disruptive threat to the financial services industry but also potentially to central banks and governments as well, particularly the government with the world’s reserve currency,” he added.
Wood had entered the cryptocurrency at $22,779 level. Bitcoin traded at $34,845.02 at the time of writing of this report.
