CNBC-TV18’s Executive Editor, Udayan Mukherjee - Things have changed a bit since the start of the year for banks. If you went back and played the tape back to the start of this year and asked ten analysts of what they wanted to buy, top of the list would be banks because the expectation was that interest rates, would come down. But right now I think the expectation has changed, bank stocks have corrected quite a bit. Is there value in banking space? Sure there is but history will tell you that banks typically do not perform as stocks once yields start hardening and interest rates expectation are on the way up, rather than the way down.

You can bang your head against a wall but history will tell you that it is not an environment in which value or no value bank stocks perform. But I suspect the one way to look at banks is if you are not a trader the next 3-4 months, when all this inflation, interest rate saga plays out, might give you good opportunities to accumulate banks stocks, if and only if you have a perspective of more than 3 quarters.

My sense is this year or may be most of this year will be difficult from an interest rate perspective because rates won’t come down any time soon, that’s what the logical sense seems to be now. If that is the case banks will perhaps under perform, also because they have the baggage of over ownership.

So if you tell yourself, rates will come down but they may take 6 months or 9 months to come down from here but I’m happy to wait for 6 to 9 months. And I know that I have to endure underperformance in the near-term, which a lot of people might not be game for. But if you can take that call I think in the next 3 months you will get bank stocks at very attractive prices and may be in 2009, you will make lot of money from banks. But in the near-term the fear of underperformance is certainly there in the financial sector and there is just no getting away from it.