All Activity

HaHa! - I have grown a soft spot for your humor, @Spekulatius!

@Viking, Munger once said that he and Buffett were cautious of investing in financial companies that “were trying to do well”. Banks, for example, can appear to be more profitable than they actually are, if they are trying desperately to report profits, and in so doing, abdicate their responsibility to set prudent loan loss provisions…. An insurer I worked for once separated profit and growth goals by assigning the marketing department incentives based on growth, and the underwriting department incentives based on underwriting profit. You can imagine how these are in conflict. Tough to get a company pulling together when one part wants to write as many new policies as possible, while another part is motivated to restrict writing new business with its attendant new business penalty. Years later, a different company I worked for focused on growth some years and underwriting profit in others. Yet the underwriting and sales marketing departments continued to have individualized goals based on profit and growth separately. In years when the company as a whole emphasized underwriting profits, it became difficult to retain experience marketing reps as their bonus compensation, based on growth incentives, plummeted. And in one case I recall, when incentives were strongest for underwriting profitability, reserving actuaries for a large line of business apparently underserved that line significantly for several years in a row. Significant bonuses were paid for a few years in a row until the oversight could no longer be masked, and substantial loss reserve increases were booked instead. A few individuals were blamed and fired, but it was a painful few years thereafter to recover from that mistake. That is one of the reasons why it is so important to monitor reserving practices of an insurer. Fairfax is on the right track by focusing on making sure that reserving practices are conservative, and are more likely to be redundant than inadequate, as evidenced by a long track record of reserve releases from prior accident years. As you have so clearly outlined, Fairfax now has their insurance subsidiaries focused on steady underwriting profitability, prudent risk and catastrophe exposure management, with conservative reserving, at the same time that their investment and capital allocation decisions are virtually unmatched by competitors in the industry. From a value investor/shareholder perspective, their operational results are providing us with “margins of safety” in a number of areas, to say nothing of the excess of market over carrying value of their assets.

Hilarious how in a thread about the World Cup the best some people can contribute is whining about how they don’t like football/soccer. I’m starting to prepare a banger whining post if there’s ever a thread about the Super Bowl.

I rarely watch it anymore either. In part because of the dramatics.

Ah great game, totally worth not getting any sleep for! Spain is going to be difficult though...

Personally, I think 2x+ book or 15x P/E+ is roughly right. Based on first principles. Using relative valuation of other insurers as a reference, even that might be low. I don’t spend much time at all thinking about what multiple the market will assign my stocks. (This only works if the business understands capital allocation and their own intrinsic value and aggressively repurchases share if they are mispriced)

Yeah, it's interesting how often you and I align (though you probably don't know this because I post rarely.) I find your stock picks way more aligned with my thought process than anyone else here--there's maybe a 60% chance of me being intrigued by any given company you post about. At this point, it's become interesting to me seeing the places we don't align. (When it comes to investing, I think it's less the companies that we find interesting, and more that 1) I typically hold shares longer, 2) I don't think you do options much, and 3) you're better and more thoughtful at analysis than me.)

This is the straw man that you're attempting to sneak in to justify your silly position. They are lobbying to enforce the rules that remove players from the game not to ensure that they don't have to compete so hard, but rather to win. This is what professional sports is about--not players attempting to maximize their laziness. But simply winning. Winning. (Well, and also about money.) It's a really difficult position that you've taken, asserting that professional athletes don't care enough about winning to fight for every advantage, particularly in the peak contest of their sport that comes around maybe 4 times in their career. It's really hard to fade all the things professional athletes do for an edge (Body-destroying steroids! Dangerous and risky play! Deliberately injuring opponents! Shameful acting!), while simultaneously asserting that them asking that the rules be enforced would be a step too far for them.

@Maverick47, I find your comments very insightful and I learn a lot. Please keep them coming (it's like getting a peek behind the curtain). Thank you.

They used to be called application engineers or customer support specialist. Must be a new thing for these billion $ companies that such a thing exists.

Why did the group bring 11 guns and body armor to an ICE facility? Oh, yeah, they never intended to use them...sure Spek. Too bad they couldn't erase their Signal chat logs. Oh well.

While this was going on, trump was enjoying his student draft deferment and cheating on exams at Wharton. I can't imagine that cowardly POS stepping up like McCain.

There are a lot of niche sports cultures in the US but that doesn’t always translate to growth. When I was in Columbus sports bars were always packed with Columbus Crew fans. But the traditional big three are definitely changing and there seems to be some more pipelines developing for “alt” sports like Lacrosse, Soccer, Rugby, Volleyball, etc. in the US. But the US is nowhere near close to what you find in say the UK with clubs signing kids at 10 and developing them from there.

Truth is, those guys and the Insurrectionists should all have been sentenced to prison. None of them were peaceful protestors and this whole thing is just one big partisan fuck up by an extremely partial President. If Trump had an honest bone in his body and really wanted to do what was right for Americans, the sentenced insurrectionists would never have been pardoned! And same with the Antifa shitheads as well. Cheers!

Hey, these were peaceful protestors just like the Insurre...I mean protestors peacefully visiting the Capitol! The President should pardon all of them too. Cheers!

There was only one shooter. The accused and convicted brought body armor, but did not wear it. Owning body armor is not illegal. I do not defend the shooter and he deserves a deft prison sentence but let face it, if those were right radicals, they would not been been accused of aiding terrorists which is why most for 50 years.

LOL! Hilarious. The MAGA faithful won't care...$1M, $1B...as long as he's implementing his/their agenda, they don't give two shits. It's additional zeroes for heroes! And John McCain...war hero, honest man, no graft, tried to do what was right regardless of party...LOSER, got caught, LOSER! Very sad when you think about what is celebrated and what isn't any more. Cheers!

Ass whooping performance

Congratulations Belgium!

Just suck in the whole experience! It will be loud! And you will get to see arguably the greatest player in the world play one of his last World Cup games. Cheers!

They shot an ICE officer in the neck, he's lucky to be alive. All those onsite were armed. They brought 11 guns with them. They were wearing body armor. They shot an ICE officer, and when he returned fire - and disabled the shooter's automatic weapon, they fled. I guess they thought that their Signal chats would protect them. They turned on each other like rats and disclosed the whole Antifa conspiracy. I just love how you make excuses for them.

Belgium embarrassed the US out there!

That’s awesome, how was visiting their HQ?

Actually I remember something called the Jan 6th insurrection. https://www.reuters.com/pictures/harrowing-scenes-jan-6-us-capitol-attack-four-years-ago-2025-01-06/54EOIAWCWBMJTANZY54FA33FKU/ 1200 years in prison and that’s not even the final tally.