I don't know, but interest rates should not really have a direct impact on FDC; they make most of their money through transaaction fees, not the rate spread. Higher rates could put the squeeze on credit card spending but that's not what the economic reports indicate; they indicate that purchasing and card use are up.
Computer services companies continue to be weak performers overall. The latest Valueline has great things to say about FDC. They view it as a high quality core holding.
Right now FDC is at the lower limits of the trading range it has been in for 4 or more months.
There is not much difference for me between FDC and a lot of other companies I bought recently because they seemed cheap. They are all down! EDS, CSCO, CSCC, BA, CA
Looking back over my stock market experiences in past years I have recognized one personal strength and two major personal weaknesses:
-The strength has been that I have usually been able to spot good companies.
-Weakness #1 has been that I have not been patient enough to wait for a good buying price. I tended to jump in too quickly, sometimes after a stock I had been following received a few upgrades. In spite of this, however, when I look at prices over a 2 or more year horizon after my initial purchses this weakness has generally not been a great deal, the stocks eventually saw nice price gains.
-Weakness #2 has been the killer and has cost me thousands. I have too frequently sold stocks, frequently at a small or moderate loss, because they did not behave the way I thought they would and I wanted to get out before my losses became greater. In almost every case, as it turned out, I sold at a bad time, usually a time of weakness in the stock price. Eventually most of my stocks went on to good (and on a few occassions outstanding) performance, but unfortunately I was no longer aboard.
So, hang in there, there may still be some downside here, particularly if the overall market turns sour for a while, but in the long run (3 - 5 years) I am pretty confident that this stock will have proven out to be a good pick.
Mike |
