Global brokerage Jefferies has updated its India model portfolio, adding four new stocks including gold-loan provider Manappuram Finance and mining major Hindustan Zinc. The changes were outlined in a research note authored by Mahesh Nandurkar of Jefferies. Model portfolios of this kind are baskets of stocks that brokerages recommend as a representative allocation, and their periodic rebalancements are closely tracked by institutional and retail investors as a signal of where sell-side analysts see relative value shifting.

A key theme behind the rebalancing is the recent surge in gold prices in global markets. In his note, Nandurkar highlighted that Indians hold gold worth nearly $4 trillion — roughly four times the amount they hold in stocks. India is one of the world's largest consumers of gold, where the metal traditionally serves as a store of household wealth — bought widely as jewellery and held across rural and urban households — and rising prices directly increase the value of those holdings.

Gold-linked businesses stand to benefit from this dynamic. Manappuram Finance is one of India's leading non-banking financial companies specializing in loans against gold jewellery, a segment in which higher gold prices can raise the loan-to-value headroom available to borrowers, while Hindustan Zinc, a Vedanta Group company, is one of the world's major producers of zinc, lead and silver — metals whose prices have moved higher alongside the broader commodities rally. The other two new additions named in the portfolio update were Meesho, the e-commerce marketplace, and Navin Fluorine, a specialty chemicals manufacturer. The additions also span different sectors — financials, mining, e-commerce and chemicals — reflecting a sectoral spread in the rebalancing rather than a single-theme change.

The update also involved exclusions from the portfolio, with Jefferies providing share-price rationale for both the new inclusions and the stocks it removed. For readers tracking such model portfolios, the detail typically worth watching in subsequent updates is which names are rotated in or out and the stated rationale, as these notes are among the few public windows into how global brokerages are positioning on Indian equities. (Source)

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