Something I've been meaning to give you all a heads up on. Rumors that BOA is going to buy out Countrywide have been pretty rampant for over a year now. When BOA took a $2B equity position in Countrywide on Aug. 23rd, those of us in the industry saw it as a big step towards the merger. Well, about a week ago, Bank of America suspended all of their Wholesale lending operations permanently. They gave no explanation. Just a "we're out." That means they are only offering mortgages via their retail branch locations and not through mortgage brokers even though BOA wholesale had quite a strong product offering and market share. Plus BOA has the added liquidity of being able to portfolio many of it's loans. Anyway, most of us in my area/industry feel that the only logic for doing so would be the long-desired merger with Countrywide. CFC's stock is beat to hell right now and with continued negatives in the financial news from mortgage related write-downs, BOA can pick up Countrywide on the cheap. If they do, BOA wouldn't need a wholesale lending arm as Countrywide is the largest wholesale lender in the country. If they do merge, I would expect that it would be good for Countrywide's stock price as the $2B equity bail out was initially met with favor from Wall Street.
Anyway, I'm not a big stock guy as I'd rather put big money in RE instead of equities, but I know that some of you are. Countrywide isn't going anywhere and is trading at a low equivalent to Jan. 2003 right now. Might be worth a look for an IRA or 401k...
Ren
"Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn." C.S. Lewis
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