Countrywide Financial
The Motley Fool CAPS investor community has rated Countrywide two stars out of five -- and it's probably gotten the second star only because it's trading for less than the proposed buyout price. With more than 2,000 players weighing in on Countrywide, though, none has ridden Countrywide's turbulence better than dwot, who has put the thumbs-down on Countrywide a total of nine times and has been correct every time, for a total of 153 points on her scorecard.
She is one of CAPS' All-Stars -- players with a rating of 80 or greater -- and she has managed a stock-picking accuracy of more than 78% on her calls while racking up more than 3,200 points. Countrywide hasn't been her only great call. Here's a look at a few of her other prescient picks:
Company |
Date Picked |
Call |
Points |
CAPS Rating (Out of 5) |
---|---|---|---|---|
Bear Stearns |
3/12/08 |
Underperform |
91 |
* |
Luminent Mortgage Capital |
6/25/07 |
Underperform |
89 |
* |
Raser Technologies |
1/29/07 |
Outperform |
139 |
* |
Data from CAPS.
So what is this investor looking at these days? Here are a few of her most recent calls on CAPS:
Company |
Date Picked |
Call |
|
---|---|---|---|
Micron Technology |
4/3/08 |
Underperform |
*** |
UBS |
4/1/08 |
Underperform |
* |
Fannie Mae |
3/31/08 |
Underperform |
* |
Data from CAPS.
Although not all of these picks may pan out, they could be a good place to start some further research. I decided to take a closer look at UBS.
The $37 billion caper
What happened to the $37 billion that UBS has lost so far in the mortgage meltdown? Whether it's hiding out with Jimmy Hoffa doesn't matter much to UBS at this point -- it's gone, and the bank's investors are none too happy. And just to put $37 billion in perspective, Reuters noted that it's "more than the entire GDP of 85 percent of African countries and roughly equals those of Slovenia and Sudan, according to World Bank figures."
So what happens now? If former UBS executive Luqman Arnold has anything to say about it, the bank will be broken up and the investment-banking division that has caused all the troubles will be asked to take a hike. To help make that happen, Arnold's investment fund, Olivant, has taken a sizeable stake in UBS and has been very vocal with the bank's board.
Given the large ownership position that Olivant took, though, it's obvious that Arnold thinks there is some value in UBS if changes are made. On CAPS, 341 players agree with that take and have rated UBS an outperformer -- most of them betting that the stock has just been beaten up too much.
But despite the group of UBS bulls on CAPS, there are enough bears in the community that the stock carries a rock-bottom one-star rating. CAPS All-Star cdulan recently joined the bearish chorus:
This one has moved to the top of my list of the financials to short. ... UBS is going to have to come to the confessional on a lot of the repos, leveraged loans, and lost prime brokerage business. That is why I think it will be worth $12 / share by year end.
So what's your take on UBS? Get in on the action by heading over to CAPS. CAPS is absolutely free, and there are already 95,000 stock pickers chipping in to find the best stocks out there.
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