Thursday, October 2, 2014

The Bullet Dodge

Yesterday Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac (FMCC) both got smacked down hard. As luck would have it, I got out last week after taking a minor loss. No clairvoyance on my part, but I did re-examine my reasons for getting into them, which was a perceived increase in new home construction. I didn't look at any government statistics, just seeing new homes starting to go up. This was back in May and the two stocks did double back them.  But 5 months out I was seeing no upside bump or jump at all, so I pulled the sell trigger. Good thing I did. I'm still following them. At the new price I consider them both buying opportunities, but not yet, I want to wait a few days to see if they continue to drop (down about 10% today). Sure, a lot of it is that the markets have been down for 3 days, but at a time when everyone else has been getting a slap on the wrist, someone opened a can of WA of epic proportions. This is the price range they were at before the big spike so I don't think they'll fall too much more. But you never know.  Sure they may spike up and I'll miss a great opportunity, but I can live with that.  I'm still seeing lots of new construction, maybe the market hasn't caught up yet.  Ten years ago these were both $60/share stocks.  I can dream, can't I?