After being out all last week on a family trip, I felt like it was difficult to get back into the mindset of investing, especially considering the many events that have happened since I last posted. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, Merril Lynch, and now AIG just to name a few of them.
In addition, I will be moving soon to Laguna Niguel. We still haven’t bought a house, in case you were wondering.
The biggest news of all of these is the nationalization of Fannie and Freddie. Numerous opinions abounded since the first whispers of the nationalization. I even did my own post back a while ago portending it.
Take a look at what it has produced:
It took me a while to believe my eyes, so I’ll sum it up as this:
Insured jumbo debt is loaned at 5.875%. Banks are demanding 8.0% for the same money. Without a rescue of FNM and FRE, the housing market would have effectively shut down… and that was before the AIG action today. I have never in my life seen a spread between jumbo loan money this high (over 2%). Considering the current crash and asset deflation, there is no way that I can call rising interest rates; I just don’t see it, and perhaps my blinders are on, but I can’t see bank credit going any further out of whack than it is right now.
In light of all of the Sunday action, I have dedicated this song to the post:
And, if this wasn’t enough, I am feeling like we are very close to capitulation, if not there. About 1.5 years ago, I predicted to a coworker that I thought the DOW would decline substantially and bottom around 10,000 to 10,500. He was incredulous, and up until this week, I was starting to wonder about my own analysis and work, and I think we are going to meet my expectations after all. In the meantime, all of the bulls have been silenced, and (except Barry Ritholtz), many are wondering if we arent actually at a bottom in the stock market. I’m not going out on a limb, but my general feeling is that we are getting close.
Housing bottoming? … not even close yet.
Welcome back Chuck.
I think the stock market is going lower. One of my coworkers pointed out that the interventions have taken an ominous tone for investors.
On the one hand the Fed/Treasury have gone and bailed out some investors with sketchy legal authority.
On the other hand into were into uncharted territory and the Fed/tresury changed the rules in arbitrary fasion.
Fan/Fre investors are going to be made whole or maybe not. Same with AIG. The stockholders are diluted to 20% value. Why the arbitrary backstop there? Why not 5%? Why not 30%?
I’m mad as hell about the move. AIG can’t pay its bills so the 80 billion is gone. Does it matter what interest rate the Fed is asking? They might as well say they loaned it to them at 8% per day.
What is AIG supposed to do in the future? They have a huge liability to the government at a high interest rate? How would they be able to compete against a new company that doesn’t have that liability?
They also were talking about allowing the company to violate the firewalls between different kinds of accounts.
This is all going to be ruinous.
Not sure what to do at this point. Worried my elderly parent is going to get burned in all this. We may be going the route of hyperinflation.
The nationalized mortgage companies are requiring conforming loans? I’d assume that means the loans are going to people with income. Will they support the Alt A type loans in conforming where people have an first home sale but over extend themselves on the new home? Or do they have to show a reasonable DTI? If they have the income then it shouldn’t be much of a problem.
Wall Street guy for 20 years. I think today was the bottom (or pretty darn close) for the market. Lots of signs, including financials declining less than the general market. Nasdaq stocks, not particularly sensitive to credit woes, were dumped today also (capitulation?). Also, there are no more mega company bombs out there (at least that i can see!)
Usually, stocks bottom 12 months before the underlying cause of the bear market does. In this case, its housing. So, i think we are 12 months, give or take, from a housing bottom.
oversimplified, but my brain is a lil fried from the last three days.
I agree on the capitulation. However, I am keeping my stops tight on stuff I recently bought in case this portends a further sell-off. History only tells us so much, so caution is highly warranted.
On a national non bubble area level, we may indeed be near 12 months from a bottom, because the fall to reestablish affordability is only so far. However to reestablish historical affordability here, we would need to fall about 35% from here in California, especially at the coasts. If we hit that in 1 year, I’d pretty much guarantee an overshoot of biblical proportions for up to 2 years after that.
I’m confident enough that we won’t see a bottom in the next 2 years that I signed a 2 year lease on our new place. In some places, there are years of houses for sale, as well as every house bought since 2004 is now basically underwater. That’s about 1/2 of all houses in SoCal. We’ll need at least anothe 3 or 4 years to sort all of this mess out enough to start coming back up. Just my opinion.
Like bubbles, crashes are rooted in irrationality so it’s nearly impossible to predict when they will end. Remember when we were “contained”, and some of the smartest people were saying it?
Chuck Ponzi
My favorite Bush “cover” of a song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJGHJu1gd8A
I think you guys are crazy for calling a bottom to anything any time within a year from now. There was MASSIVE volatility this week, which isn’t exactly a sign that things are stabilizing. We haven’t even come close to seeing the end of bank failures. Then again I think I’m in the red so far this year, so what do I know. As others have said befor me, invest carefully.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200.....homeowners
According to this we are looking at 19M homes at 50% DTI.