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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ild who wrote (951)	9/22/2003 4:24:05 PM
From: ild	Respond to of 110194

DECLINE IN MORTGAGE VOLUME SHOULD LEAD TO STAFFING CUTS Due to the over 60% and nearly 80% decline total originations and refinancings, respectively, we expect employment to decline considerably in the mortgage finance industry in the coming months. It would appear that employment peaked in July as Countrywide Financial reduced its headcount in Aug by 2% sequentially. Specifically, Countrywide’s loan origination staff declined for the first time since January 2001 to 20,447 in August from 20,903 in July. Loan closing staff declined 4.5% sequentially to 1,065, which compared to 1,115 in July. Also, according National Mortgage News, GMAC mortgage and E*Trade have both begun cutting residential lending staff. 7 INSIDER TRANSACTIONS There were a number of insider transactions this week. Below we summarize the transactions: Capital One, Vice-Chairman, Nigel Morris sold a net total of approximately 250K shares this week in three separate transactions at prices ranging from $58.62 to $$60.66 per share. This follows Mr. Morris’ sale of about 275K over the last several weeks (exclusive of the transactions mentioned above). Recall, COF said that Mr. Morris will sell 3 million shares over the next year, halving his total ownership. Bruce Hammonds, CEO of MBNA Bank, sold 206K shares at an average price of $24.25 per share. Charles Cawley, CEO of MBNA Corp, sold 50K shares at $23.53, and Douglas Denton, Officer at KRB, sold 28K shares at $23.80. Edward Gilligan, an Officer at AXP, sold about 15K shares at an average price of $45.49. Thomas Boone, Senior Managing Director at CFC sold 60K shares at an average price of $75.58. Harley Snyder, Director at CFC sold 20K shares at $69.18/share. John Burr, CEO of CIT’s Equipment Finance unit, sold 10K shares at a price of $29.63. This marks the first sell transaction since the company’s shares began trading publicly in July 2002. Bradley Shuster, President of PMI Capital Corp, sold 11K shares at a price of $34.50. Stephen Smith, COO at PMI , sold 15K shares at a price of $34.70.