RE:RE:RE:HCG tends to take short selling personally TITOO
There are so many errors in your series of posts, one doesn't know where to start.
Will cover just two.
You have said that Home has admitted to 1.9 billion in fraudulent underwritten mortgages quietly adjusting the total from 1 billion to 1.98 billion.
WRONG
In fact ,Home has stated that they fired 45 brokers who did a total of 1 billion dollars of mortgage business with them over a two year period ,and then revised that disclosure to a five year period, of 1.9 billion. One number is for two years, the other for five. These are 100% of ALL mortgages. You have made your own assumption that 100% of these mortgages were fraudulent ( meaning the incomes on the application form were fudged ). In fact, Home has found through review of the 1.9 billion of mortgages, that for roughly 5 to 6% of these mortgages ,they could not verify the homeowners income. In other words around 120 million dollars of the mortgages from these 45 brokers had suspect income projections.
120 million is a far cry from the 1.9 billion that the short crowd through around as if it were a fact.
SECOND
You and all the shorts always say that the loan provisions of Home are vastly understated.
WRONG AGAIN
The average value of a GTA home has probably gone up by 35% - 40% in the last few years. When you take that 35% or more increase in value, plus a 20% down payment ,its easy to see that the FMV of the home is now FAR above the mortgage. For example, if three years ago someone bought a house for say 600,000 dollars in the GTA, and took out a mortgage from HOME of 480,000, dollars that same house could easily be worth 825,000 dollars today. Probably more. Using these conservative numbers the equity behind the mortgage is at least 345,000 dollars today . (825,000 value, less mortgage of 480,000, being 345,000).
Lets say the homeowner is now out of work, and cant make their mortgage payments. In the world of those that are short , Home, would take a huge loss and has not adequately provided for this loss in their provision. In the real world, the homeowner has a choice of walking away from the home, and giving up on equity of at least 345,000 dollars or simply selling the house and keeping the 345,000 for himself.
The homeowner would always sell the house and pay off the Home mortgage in full, and keep the 345,000 for himself. For this reason, its VERY unlikely that Home will incur any bad debts on their mortgages outstanding in the GTA ( 85% ) and thus the provisions are probably high if anything and have no need to be increased.
If for some reason all houses in the GTA went down in value by 25%,, a number that only those in either government or who live more that 1000 K from the GTA ,think is possible. Again, look at the homeowner in my example above. He still has over a 100 thousand dollar buffer, and would sell the house at 25% less than todays value, and walk away with 139,000 dollars. Again, no bad debt to Home.
I have been short a lot of stocks. But I have bought more Home shares at 30 dollars a while back and more this week, as its a huge bargain at these levels. Its time for Home to start paying out a dividend in the range of 40% of cash flow, not 20%, which would double the dividend and give investors a good return, while we wait for stock to go back to fifty bucks. I would never short a stock trading at less than 7 times earnings with a long history of success.