Anand Tandon on 3 ways to play housing theme & why he doesn’t like gold financiers

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Independent analyst Anand Tandon says “the best way of doing it is through the financial markets, housing finance and banks themselves are actually a good way to play. Real estate remains quite difficult to handle because it depends on where you are going to be positioned.”What is your take regarding the consumer durables basket because numbers were not impressive from the AC makers like Blue Star or Voltas? But on the other hand, real estate demand continues to perk up. Would you rather play through the other names, the cables and wires, the other building material names like PolyCab, Havells, etc.?If you are looking to play the housing theme, the best way of doing it is through the financial markets, housing finance and banks themselves are actually a good way to play.

Real estate remains quite difficult to handle because it depends on where you are going to be positioned. So each of those real estate companies have their own quirks. The consumer durables space again is a derived demand.

While it is something that has shown fairly strong growth, none of them are particularly cheap. The simplest way of doing it is through the financial market.What is your take on gold financiers? It is getting a very crowded trade in the sense that each and every bank wants to get into that space. Do you see any differential or any upside in betting on these gold financiers now?There is a certain advantage of looking at the gold financiers in Kerala where it is almost a cultural thing.

People regularly take loans against gold. I do not think it is the same kind of activity in the rest of the country. Of course, we have had a phase where almost all companies got into gold finance and realized that finally it is not that easy to manage