This collection of dog stocks I believe has good chance to be up 50% in 2008. Here they are. Monday is last day of tax selling. IMB ($6.15) - This is a small CFC. It is trading at 25% of book value. I do not anticipate book value to fall below $16 and they already wrote everything down last quarter. Margins on new mortgages have gone way up as so many players have gone under and spreads have blown out. By end of 2008 focus will shift from credit losses from 2005-2007 vintage loans to the long term potential of mortgage lending. CFC ($8.75) - Same as above. Discount to book is 50%. At some point there will be interest in owning the #1 player in the mortgage industry. CFC is the #1 servicer of mortgages and this business alone is worth more than the current share price. Spreads are widening. Servicing is a stable business with stable cash flows. CFC borrowing costs will continue to drop as fed lowers rates. Margins on new business has improved alot. You won't here that said on CNBC or by the shorts. Also they are getting big into insurance. They service $1.65 trillion worth of mortgages. They can cross sell insurance and other financial products. May want to wait until after the next earnings report to avoid a possible loan loss bombshell. This is already priced in, but you never know in this market. MHO ($10.10) - Very small home builder. Trading at 25% of book. Debt/Equity is in the middle of the pack and they are not as debt burdened as SPF, BZH HOV. These guys build good homes and have a good repuation. Years of losses are priced into this one. MHO has pumped alot of money into converting raw land into finished lots over the last few years. It can now generate alot of cash flow as it sells homes on these finished lots and does not reinvest the cash. Book value is $39 here. Probably really more like $29. But at $10 the price seems right. This is a real estate bank. Crude going to $120, milk to $5, dollar to 1.55 euro. I don't think real estate going to fall another 30% needed to make this a bad investment at $10. LCC (14.71) - Most hated airline of 2007. Down from $60. Trading at 3 times 2007 earnings. Trading at 10 times 2008 earnings assuming $90 oil. Market cap only $1.2 billion but they have $3 billion in cash. Extremely strong balance sheet relative to other legacy carriers. Stock not going under. Private equity could buy this airline at $25 and pay themselves a $1 billion divided. Any merger activity in the sector and this stock will go way up. This stock was 50% higher just 2 months ago. Oil was $90 then too. This stock could go up 50% on nothing. Where else you going to get 50% in this crummy market. WNR ($24.40) - Worst performing refinery stock in 2007. This stock is $4 down $15 up. It was $60's in the summer but that was bubble and probably never goes there again. I calculate fair value of $34/share. Some analysts have high 30's targets. There aren't many stocks in the oil sector right now that offer 40% upside. I'm a big bear on refining long term. But i think this will be $30+ in summer driving season. PMI ($13.26) - Mortgage insurer. book value is 43.96. They will have losses next 6 quarters but book value will likely be around $30 at end of cycle. So should be screaming buy at current price. Its silly season in some financials and thanks to Cramer wrongly saying this company would lose AA rating and go bankrupt, we getting a good price on it. Last month it had its AA rating affirmed and S&P called it extremely well capitalized. Future prospects for mortgage insurance are very bright. Mortgage insurance rates have gone up and home buyers have less access to 2'nd mortgage piggy backs to avoid paying mortgage insurance. So more people have to buy insurance. PMI has a global foot print. It is also weighed down because of its ownersihp interest in FGIC which is like MBI and ABK. But FGIC should have its funding resolved soon and could be catalyst for up move. $28 is a reasonable price for PMI. Alot of analyst have target prices $18-38 on it. ALSO, ORI bought a 19% stake in last 3 months. ORI is another insurance co. They said that PMI was more undervalued than their own stock so instead of buying back their own shraes, they bought shares in PMI and MTG. This is HUGE vote of confidence from a company that understands the business. RDN (11.70) - Same as PMI. Also Marty Whitman funds took a 19% stake. ETFC (3.54) - Worth $6-12 to an acquirer. So much synergies to cut costs to Schwab/ Ameritrade. If they were willing to pay $20's 9 months ago, they should be willing to pay over $10 now. News last week that outflows out of etrade accounts had stopped was the first step. This company worth so much more to an acquirer than stand alone. Disclosure: I own all these stocks. Do your own dilligence. Alot of my fundamental/value picks blow up big time. Often co's have hidden fundamentals and no way can anyone predict what the economy will do. But these stocks all make sense to me and are SUPER value stocks. Value stocks tend to go down first. but these have been going down and all down 10-30% more in just the last month. Has to be huge tax loss selling on all these names. This post is mostly for my own amusement to track later in year. Please submit your own picks. This should be a starting point for further research and not a recomendation to buy. These are ideas.
I think a good bet would be to buy solid home builders towards the end of the first quarter of 2008 and look for a nice uptrend throught the balance of the year. This housing situation will probably get a bit worse before it gets better but good buys are looming around the corner.
Interestingly, someone pointed out that if home building stocks track the Dot Com washout, they should bottom around Feb 2008. Tech wreck lasted about 30 months. 30 months from Jul 2005 housing peak is Feb. makes sense, because stocks tend to look out 6 months and home sale comps should get easy come Aug 2008. My guess is that New home sales Aug-OCT 2008 will be higher than 2007 levels. Not hard to come in at better than a 12 year low. Housing is a disaster though. But for any company that is not going under, it is about priced in.
I'm sticking with tech stocks for a long-term 08 hold. I'll be buying AAPL, MSFT, GOOG, and other well-capitalized stocks on dips. Once Citigroup clears its balance sheet and lets the public know what they hold, I might pick them up (currently think they'll bottom in the mid 20s). Might pick up Morgan Stanley or Merrill. A lot of analysts are starting to predict that financials have or will hit a bottom this quarter or in Q1 '08 once they disclose and writedown their subprime assets. We could see a nice rebound in the financials after the 1st quarter if the Fed cuts about 50 bp in 2 meetings.
"Interestingly, someone pointed out that if home building stocks track the Dot Com washout, they should bottom around Feb 2008. Tech wreck lasted about 30 months. 30 months from Jul 2005 housing peak is Feb" The financial stocks are about 3-6 months into their meltdown-they didnt start falling in 2005.It started just this summer. I sold C in october for 48$...February 2008 is waaaaay early for a bottom.This is not going to be a V shaped recovery.....House prices in los angeles have only fallen 12% from their peak.There is no way they will bottom in 2008.House prices here peaked in early 2007.There are a ton of homes for sale at delusional prices and they are not being sold.There are no buyers for shoeboxes for 600k which also require you to put down 100k cash. From what i see here the housing prices will have some type of moment where prices collapse suddenly due to a market panic...I see a 50% haircut on these absurd prices.In LA we havent even begun to see a meltdown-everybody has their fingers crossed and holding their breath but they will eventually give in to reality and just liquidate at whatever price they can. It doesnt make any sense to pay off a mortgage thats worth more than your house.Its easier and less stressful to just walk away and have bad credit for 10 yrs or whatever.
How many of these stocks will go bankrupt in 2008? Do you have any idea? You can lose all your wads just like DFC ( Delta Financial)where value Investor Mohnish Pabrai perhaps owned 4.6 million or so shares according to his filings. DFC are bankrupt and the stock is trading 0.06 cents today! Just the idea that someone would try to find value in last puff businesses is horribly unsettling to me. Are there not enough good companies that will decorate your accounts with small amount of wisdom? A great lesson to learn from his debacle in value investing stocks and "50% discounts to book value" nonsense spewed all around you. Never touch that with a 10 foot pole.
MHO ($10.10) - Very small home builder. Trading at 25% of book. Debt/Equity is in the middle of the pack and they are not as debt burdened as SPF, BZH HOV. These guys build good homes and have a good repuation. Years of losses are priced into this one. MHO has pumped alot of money into converting raw land into finished lots over the last few years. It can now generate alot of cash flow as it sells homes on these finished lots and does not reinvest the cash. Book value is $39 here. Probably really more like $29. But at $10 the price seems right. This is a real estate bank. Crude going to $120, milk to $5, dollar to 1.55 euro. I don't think real estate going to fall another 30% needed to make this a bad investment at $10. if you think crude is going to 120, milk going to 5 and the euro going to 1.55 then why buy a homebuilder, why not buy the crude futures, milk and short the dollar???
You logic is insane. The company is on hard times, if it files for bankruptcy all of a sudden.....you are done like a fish on a grill. Besides how long it will take a $10 stock to go to $20 when there is no improvement in real estate? If you took that money and bought a solid company like AAPL you would easily gain $10 $20, $30 in short term trading.
Does anyone here remember when AAPL was a stock that no one wanted, remember it trading around 10-12 bucks a share. All of the sudden AAPL can do no wrong, I think its time to start concentrating on other stocks beside AAPL, AAPL has had a great run, but we all know that runs like this don't last forever. Look at DELL, MSFT, AOL, EBAY etc.