Mortgage REIT stock prices plummet

Shares in mortgage real estate investment trusts slumped further in the wake of QE3, the Federal Reserve’s latest round of quantitative easing, Bloomberg News reported.

Annaly Capital Management and American Capital Agency, the largest mortgage REITs in the nation, each saw shares tumble 2.6 percent, Bloomberg reported. A Bloomberg index of shares in mortgage REITs fell by 4.5 percent — the largest drop in a single day since October of 2011.

But the plummeting prices may be an overrreaction, analysts said. “Today’s action has been driven overwhelmingly by the retail community through reactionary selling as well as stop loss triggers which have only intensified the pressure,” a report from Sterne Agee & Leach said. [Bloomberg News] — Guelda Voien