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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Spekulatius who wrote (36231)	12/18/2009 12:39:01 AM
From: Paul Senior	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78753

Small banks. "I agree there are many opportunities in this sector" Delving into this, I ask myself how do these banks propose to make their profits? To check what services these banks might provide, I randomly picked number 7 on the list. It turns out to be BankAtlantic, a stock I once owned and at one time almost got thrown off somebody's thread for suggesting it was an inappropriate "investment" for the person. Anyway to quickly move on, I'll pick #10 too: Here are their businesses, which I assume are similar for all the others. bankatlantic.com sterlingsavingsbank.com Basically, these small banks seem to have businesses that involve credit cards and atms, making commercial and business loans (for those banks structured that way), and...what I am interested in --> making mortgage loans. In past, it seems to me (I have no facts), that the bulk of their profits has come from mortgages, esp. home mortgages and refinancing. Not so much from money management or their issuing CD's or having ATMs, and maybe not so much from other business/commercial aspects. Therefore, if someone is buying these small banks, they seem --to me-- to be making a bet that the housing sector will still be important, and that these local banks might really succeed going forward, if the housing industry prospers too. Well, I'm one who is looking to again reenter the housing stocks. That sector seems very much out of favor. Not too many positive people betting on housing stocks. If bets are willing to be made on some of these small banks pulling through, then imo, some housing stocks ought to be considered as well at this time. And I'm just in the process of doing that.