Washington Mutual, Inc. (WM)

hbl815 (54.48) Submitted: 4/17/08 2:36 PM

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Washington Mutual is one of my companies. I am holding
on and I know it will come back eventually

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peteriehl (99.33) Submitted: 4/22/08 9:45 AM

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Because...?

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Fallen001 (< 20) Submitted: 4/23/08 9:17 AM

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I hate to agree with HBL but, WM is still a traditional S&L and still has a huge prescence in many key areas with traditional services ... Not to mention that they are still the largest holder of credit card debt and issuance in the US (I believe the world? I could be wrong on that) and even with all the bad news out there about credit; it is still a highly lucrative industry and the payoff is much better than the mortage business in the short-term ... That was the problem with the recent mortage problems; instead of working mortages to cover long-term exposure, they became vehicles of short-term investment, a very bad situation...When someone loses a house the ripple effect is felt throughtout the economy, when someone defaults on a credit card, the exposure is much less in monatary terms and no one loses a house; WM just keeps collecting 18%-22% from most other sub-prime borrowers ... Hell, they'll even reissue a defaulter a higher interest credit card, lower the limit and collect back their losses ... And make no mistake, the current board will be reigned in by TX Pacific who now has a seat on the board ...

All in all, they are currently a very bad company but they are like Mario Williams or Jake Long, the upside is why you draft them right now ...

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jgseattle (< 20) Submitted: 5/21/08 1:08 AM

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I have never shorted a company in my real money account. If I was to go that way it would be a financial and most likely WM. The credit card business was purchased not to long ago, I think 2005, at a heavy price and they are increasing reserves to handle all the coming defaults in that business.

WM will be purchased at around $6 or $7/share inside two years maybe less.

I have the short position open in CAPS and unless the housing market turns as perdicted, early 2009, the economy grows at >2%, and unemployment does not drop. if any of these things happen in a material matter WM is going to get killed.

Trivia. The stat that has the best predictive value on real estate prices? Employment and how confident people are in their jobs. I am watching this stat very closely and until the US economy has a few positive reading for employment the housing market is going down and so is WM.

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Fallen001 (< 20) Submitted: 5/22/08 10:21 AM

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I no doubt agree with your assesment of WM ... I think they are a decent company riddled with incompetent mgrs; starting with the Board itself ... The only thing that keeps WM from getting bought is the credit squeeze and the massive write-downs at all the major financial firms. I do not think there will be many large players out there looking for another big takeover that they have a huge potential in getting burned with ... Any major financial has enough to worry about on their own, I can see Buffet getting involved with WM, possibly if things do not turn around soon here in the US & they continue to flounder ...

However, to get after your last point a bit; no doubt that consumer sentiments are lagging right now and paying the current bills is what's keeping peiple up at night, yet, when home prices go down and people start seeing "deals" in home prices again in hard-hit areas, buying will pick back up ... there are still plenty of wise Americans who are not as exposed to piss-poor decision and the "deals" of a few yaers back as the news makes it out to be ....

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