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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: patron_anejo_por_favor who wrote (5420)	9/19/2002 6:06:53 AM
From: zonder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Thanks for the input. Share prices of the mortgage insurers you have cited are all sweeping the floor, after MTG's warning last week. I concur with you on CCR and NCEN (and humbly add CIT, SAXN, and RWT to the list to short) and believe that next to go will be such highly leveraged real-estate lenders. On a separate note (and sorry if this is off-topic for this board): Have you ever looked at the UK real-estate market? No sign of a downturn there yet. I believe there is a significant opportunity there to short anything and everything related to housing, starting with mortgage insurers, REITs & CEITs that invest in mortgages, MBSs, and eventually the homebuilders that concentrate especially in upper areas.

To: patron_anejo_por_favor who wrote (5420)	9/19/2002 9:13:33 AM
From: Oblomov	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

PAPF, why do you prefer FRE to FNM as a short?

To: patron_anejo_por_favor who wrote (5420)	9/19/2002 10:15:52 AM
From: yard_man	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

Over?? biz.yahoo.com

To: patron_anejo_por_favor who wrote (5420)	9/19/2002 11:48:33 AM
From: MulhollandDrive	Respond to of 306849

subprime lenders beware... quote.bloomberg.com 09/19 11:36 Citigroup to Pay $240 Mln to Settle Lending Charges (Update2) By Helen Stock Washington, Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc. agreed to pay $240 million to settle accusations its consumer finance unit charged excessive fees on loans to customers with a history of unpaid bills. The world's largest financial services company will pay a record $215 million to resolve charges by the Federal Trade Commission and $25 million to settle a class-action lawsuit, the agency said in a statement. The case is related to the former Associates First Capital Corp., which Citigroup bought in 2000. The settlement is part of Chairman Sanford Weill's effort to clear away probes and lawsuits related to the New York-based bank's business with Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc., conflicts of interest among its analysts and practice of allocating sought-after initial public offering shares to corporate executives. ``You want to get these things out of the way as soon as possible,'' said Chris Wiles, who helps manage about $43 billion at Strong Capital Management Inc. in Pittsburgh and owns Citigroup shares. Settlements are ``a lot less costly than to have your stock losing market value.'' Weill ousted Michael Carpenter on Sept. 9 as head of the Salomon Smith Barney brokerage unit and put in charge Charles Prince, Citigroup's former general counsel, whose top task is to settle the charges. Citigroup shares fell $1.08 to $28.03 at 11:31 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The stock has dropped 40 percent this year, the third-worst performer in the 24-member Philadelphia KBW index of U.S. banks. The New York-based bank was expected to pay about $200 million to settle the FTC charges, the Wall Street Journal reported Sept. 6. `Higher Price' ``This shows they're willing to settle these issues at a higher price and more quickly than they have in the past,'' said Michael Levine, a fund manager at OppenheimerFunds Inc., which held 18 million Citigroup shares at the end of June. ``They're biting the bullet.'' The FTC fine is the largest for a consumer-protection settlement since General Motors Corp. in the early 1980s agreed to pay $75 million to settle charges it failed to tell consumers about a defective auto part. ``The commission will not tolerate the fleecing of subprime borrowers through deceptive lending practices,'' said Timothy Muris, chairman of the FTC, in the statement. The lawsuit was filed in a federal district court in California. In all, as many as 2 million consumers will receive compensation from the settlement, which is contingent on court approval, the FTC said in a statement. ``We are confident that today's settlement provides redress to those former Associates customers who were harmed,'' Citigroup said in a statement