Pfizer has discovered a vaccine for COVID-19 with an effectiveness rate of 90 percent. Is a victory in the war against COVID finally in sight? Are there more legs to global equity rally? Steven Wieting, MD and Global Chief Investment Strategist of Citi Private Bank shared his thoughts with CNBC-TV18.

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“Putting an effective vaccine in place through the public is a game changer for the world economy,” he said in an interview with CNBC-TV18.

He believes this development is far more crucial than the US Presidential Elections.

“A vaccine and a medical solution to COVID-19 is the most important news for the world economy and 2021,” he added.

“I am excited by the prospects of a vaccine, I think that there is tremendous opportunity for the world economy to recover from it. Let us be a tiny bit careful about initial news headlines and the effect on markets,” he said.

According to him, the split government in the US is favourable for asset prices.

“For global markets, the most important thing is that we will move back to traditional policy-making, towards rules-based trading systems, gone will be escalating tariffs and tariff threats, this created a tremendous amount of business apprehension over the last few years and President-elect Joe Biden and US President Donald Trump would have had extremely different international policies,” he said.

“Biden will run a very different foreign policies that will make US dollar in all likelihood – which is on a downward trajectory - we won’t see these bouts of risk aversions related to trade policy,” he added.

“The US and China both led global equity markets in 2020. We think that there is a catching up opportunity for many markets. Emerging Asia looks particularly attractive right now for us. COVID is not an unstoppable trend, it will end and we will see a rebound in the many depressed assets that have been held back sharply by this pandemic,” Wieting said.

He believes, Asia is an unstoppable uptrend at the moment. “It is the region of the world that has the most attractive long-term growth rates. India, specifically, is a very long-term development story that should be part of international investors’ portfolios,” he added.

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(Edited by : Santosh Nair)

First Published:Nov 10, 2020 9:35 AM IST