All Activity

I know roughly if I am doing better than the index but no, I don’t track my performance. Not sure why I need to know what my cagr is.

Whether the USSR would have actually intervened is irrelevant....the mere tail risk that they might was enough to scare the hell out of Washington. The US had spent decades at that point meticulously avoiding a direct conflict with the USSR in theatres across the globe, and they weren't going to gamble on starting World War III on the Soviet border over a bunch of clerics running around in Tehran . That uncertainty alone gave the Islamic revolution a cold war deterrent shield in those early days. The US sat on its hands paralyzed by fear - not because they we're certain the USSR would intervene but because they couldn't be certain the USSR wouldn't! The Iranian regime exploited this Cold War anxiety to its maximum effect. You missed the second part of my explanation re: hostage crisis - yes expelling diplomats removes a foreign threat, but the hostage taking was doing double duty for the Islamic revolution. By manufacturing a 444-day national emergency, Khomeini forced Bazargan’s moderates to resign, purged all his secular rivals, and locked in absolute clerical control for the Islamic revolution. In that period every domestic rival was labelled an American agent seeking to destroy the Islamic revolution. See it wasn't just a counter revolutionary security operation- it was a manufactured crisis to allow for a highly calculated internal power grab. It allowed Khomeini to brutally consolidate power - highly rational for that narrow purpose. The realist answer here is quite simple - structural and geographic considerations drive who becomes enemies over time.......as you pointed out yourself Iran and Israel had a relatively cooperative relationship pre-1979. What changed outside the obvious? The structure of the Middle East. Think of it like a mini-version middle power version of the famous thucydides trap. When shared Arab enemies collapsed in the region, Iran and Israel were the only major powers left - a duopoly of power & influence, this made a structural rivalry inevitable as both pushed to grow its relative power in the region(Germany - France etc.). As for the US, I mean Iran didn't arbitrarily pick an enemy here....due to the 1953 U.S.-backed coup, Washington was already an established existential threat to any regime that took office in Tehran that wasn't to Washington's liking. But "who started it" is nonsense best left for kids in the playground...structural realities are what sustain conflicts over time.....the Israeli-Iran regional security competition would have inevitably pulled in D.C. over time regardless of the hostage incident to say nothing of the Cold War dynamics sitting above that. I will concede one thing however in the neighbourhood of your point above about creating unnecessary enemies - in a perfect world if Khomeini had an alternative vehicle to consolidate power domestically in 1979 to the US hostage crisis he should have taken it.....I don't know enough about the options available to him at the time to judge rationality or not but the hostage crisis did indeed move Iran from being enemy number 52 on the US's enemies list to being much much higher (to put it mildly). I think in this area one can argue that perhaps Khomeini/the regime miscalculated the ROI of the hostage crisis which is not the same as being irrational nutjobs. The moderator - mediator here is clearly capability. You've seen the threat equation before - Threat = Intent x Capability Death to America is rhetorical nonsense coming from the mouths of any Iranian who spews it - what US person goes to bed at night concerned that Iran may do something that would threaten the US's continued existence, the answer is precisely zero US persons. Look at the asymmetry in capability here. Death to Israel carries more freight as Iran is a larger country in closer proximity and as we've talked about engaged in a regional security competition with proxies to boot....but again let's be real here, Israel has the US security umbrella, vastly superior military capability, larger economy and if that weren't enough a nuclear capability. These phrases are hot air and rhetorical nonsense because simply they are not underpinned by any credible capability to carry them out. Iran is a threat to Israeli safety and security but it does not rise to the level of an existential threat to Israel. And as regards US and Israel wiping out Iran......lets be serious here, the reason they haven't is because invading and occupying a massive, mountainous nation of 90 million people would require a catastrophic expenditure of blood, treasure, and political capital. The ROI on total annihilation is deeply negative. Therefore, the US and Israel make the highly rational, calculated choice to manage the threat through crippling sanctions, cyber warfare, and systematically degrading Iran's proxy networks....containing the problem without paying the suicidal cost of a full-scale ground war. Epic Fury has proved both my points above again.....nobody anywhere considers the Iranian threat serious enough to expend the massive cost required to annihilate the regime. The reason Israeli/US neo-cons can't rally popular support for further military action in Iran (boots on the ground) is for that precise reason. Put simply Iran is just not a credible of enough threat that it is politically popular enough in the US to bother to pay the high price required to annihilate them. 'First shot' arguments are just nonsense and I wont get dragged into one except to say that Iran would say the first shot was the US's in 1953 with the coup they orchestrated against the regime in Tehran....but as I said before "who started it" arguments are best left to kids in the playground. Structural contemporaneous realities are what sustain conflicts over time not who did what back in the past or when it comes to the Middle East who did what back in 500 BC or 20 AD and all that nonsense!!!!! re: Attacks by Hezbollah & Hamas.....my language wasn't precise enough here previosuly but goes back to offense-defense indistinguishability arena. Yes its offensive in nature but its fundamentally a defensive strategy... the aim for Tehran, is to impose continuous friction on Tel Aviv that sits in a geopolitical grey zone. It ensures Israel must perpetually expend capital just to manage its near backyard.....a rival expending military capital near-shore has by extension less military capital to expend offshore i.e. in proximity to Iran. Again a form of offense that is functionally defensive. It is a deterrent in the sense that it shifts the theatre of the conflict to Israel's backyard and away from Tehran. Of course the other point re: Hamas and Hezbollah that nobody likes to acknowledge but is true - is that Iran has a principal-agent problem with these groups......they exert great influence over them no doubt but they don't perfectly control them and their interests aren't perfectly aligned.....US intelligence post Oct 7th shows that Tehran was as shocked as anyone regarding what Hamas had done....indeed many commentators have indicated that if the leadership in Tehran had been aware of Hamas's plans re: Oct 7th they would have attempted to stop it for the very reasons you point out....it was an act of such brutality that it invited the dog AND the owner to be shot. Iran wants low level friction that continually consumes IDF resources & political attention in Tel Aviv but not so high that attention turns directly to Tehran. Nothing in proxy warfare management is perfect. Your local proxy pitbull designed to impose continuous low level friction on your rival and keep things in a gray zone...... is an animal you only partially control and because their risk calculus is not your your risk calculus things can go wrong.....to your point and I agree with it.....Iran has a tail risk here via this proxy network that could go badly wrong for it SOMEDAY....but let's be clear, the owner hasn't been killed yet after 45y years of imposing that brutal proxy friction. Highly brutal, highly rational. The U.S. and Israel have spent decades and billions "shooting the dogs" in Lebanon, Gaza, and Iraq, but they painstakingly avoid invading Iranian soil. Even now Epic Fury was just an aerial bombing campaign that can't gain the momentum to move to a ground invasion. Hell the US couldn't even sustain the blockade of the blockade after the bombing stopped! Why? Again because even the ROI on the blockade of the blockade was negative - never a mind a direct ground war with a mountainous nation of 90 million people which would be catastrophically negative relative to existential risk Iran poses to the US. For Israel we can argue something else but that circles back to the capability problem Israel has....it can't annihilate Iran on its own. In a perfect world the leadership in Tehran should be disappeared but the world isn't perfect - they've entrenched themselves in power there with the distributed control system the purposely designed to be regime change proof. The SOH saga proves how little it takes to shut the Straits - and the world needs some kind of central Government in Tehran controlling its vast territory (if only to keep the oil and fertilizer flowing). Turning Iran into Syria for this reason alone is not a good idea. The dilemma remains the above for Bibi/ the US etc......the Iranian threat (intent x capability) has never risen to a level where the ROI makes sense for the US/European allies to greenlight the massive investment required to take out the regime (despite Bibi's years of threat inflation) and Israel alone hasn't the capability itself.......I would love to see them gone tomorrow but it's clear the cost (relative to the actual threat level from Iran) does not meet the threshold that makes sense...I totally get it, try saying the above to the family of the victims from Oct 7th or those living under air raid sirens in Northern Israel caused by rockets coming in nightly from Hezbollah. The reality however of Epic Fury ending in an MOU has proven that devastating algebra once again.....Iran and how it chooses to execute its foreign policy is a blight on the world and the Middle East but it calibrates its chaos so the juice is never quite worth the squeeze in terms of removing the regime. The one nation for which the algebra works and it would be 'worth it' (Israel) hasn't the capability to do it alone.

I like the successes of some african teams. They are hungry and grippy.

Crazy. Well done being on the ball - I'd be tempted to buy more under 2,200.

Yea i was deep in micron with cost basis less that $50. I felt good about my triple never dreamed it woulda been a 1T+ company. I even beleived the argument that all the AI would fill up all the storage but didnt think it would have a backlog driving them anywhere near what we are seeing now. I still have a very small position that Ill probably just let ride and see what happens.

Yes, when I was younger. As I grew older periodic returns became less meaningful. Today, most of my assets are privately held so there would be little to no point in even trying.

I track my net worth and my spending. I spend <50% of what I earn and invest the rest in real estate and investments, I have done this for several decades. I personally don't see the point in knowing the exact percentage of my investment gains year. I am unsure how I would use that information, if I didn't beat the S&P for several years, should I just move it all to an index? If I consistently beat the index or should I add leverage? I don't have interest in being fully invested in index and I don't want leverage.

Micron going parabolic is more luck than anything even if they held. The shortages didn't really start until fairly recently and before that the industry for DRAM wasn't really the best in terms of economics. No one even 3 years ago would have predicted that DRAM would still be sold out at prices multiple of the prior ATH

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/obituaries/alan-greenspan-economist-longtime-head-federal-reserve-dies-100-rcna42286 I remember when this guy did a surprise interest rate cut in Jan 2001 Marsh McLennan, which used to be MMC, went vertical for like 15 points and I got a good chunk of it Those were da days

More weird action on Fairfax and Fairfax India near the open

Likely a question for some of the wealthier folk on the board but I’m curious if you tracked your returns and CAGR etc during the earlier part of your wealth building but then when wealth got to a certain size it kind of became pointless. Obviously that number would be different for everybody depending on where they live and their lifestyle but if you are a good investor over time you will eventually get to a point where your net worth is large and whether you end up getting 5%, 10% or 20% return on that it mostly becomes meaningless. Do you still like to track it to compare yourself to others or see if you still got it, or do you now just check your net worth every now and then, and as long as it’s not dropping all is good. Maybe some people never tracked their returns, nothing wrong with that either. For me I track things quite diligently but sometimes wonder should I bother.

Change, you may call Iran's behavior rational but when your ideology is death and destruction to those you don't agree with, your definition of rational needs some serious adjustment. We all have to share the same World. It is really no more complicated than that. Trying to "rationalize" any definition of "rational" beyond that is truly irrational.

Yeah Lukaku was a bit aloof

I agree, Belgium looked weak here. Their whole game was odd and played without soul. Belgium used to play decent soccer with a solid defense and fast counters. The coach does not seem to use the talent he has available effectively.

I've been buying Adobe. Adobe sells tools to professionals, and I only think AI is gonna make those tools more powerful (they already have launched some very neat features saving professionals a lot of time). Prompting might work for some crude instructions. But translating the imagination of a creative into something tangible is probably easier by hand (mouse+keyboard) than by prompting. It's not like people are already particularly good at articulating their (creative) visions. There is competition at the edges, but I think it's a bit overblown. Adobe could buy Figma with one years' worth of free cash flow (and probably should pay for a new ballroom to make it happen)...). With all the AI slop being generated, trust is only becoming more important. I think strong software vendors with good customer relations will do fine, as long as they keep up with competition and improve their offerings. Adobe might've gotten a bit arrogant, so I don't mind if they lay off the price hikes for a bit and increase freemium offering.

Great game? It was fucking disgraceful. Never been more ashamed of my country's football until now. They have two draws in the weakest group of the entire world cup... Still don't understand what Lukaku is still doing on that pitch... can barely hold a ball let alone properly pass or dribble. We have little to no dribbling skills except for Lukebakio and for some reason he doesn't even get to start. I would still give the advantage to Egypt here based on the past two games.

He is gone. Cheers!

Again, I have to correct your representation of facts. It's true, the billboards are in Lebanon but they are in a very specific part of Lebanon. They are in southern suburb of Beirut - Dahiyeh - which is a Hezbollah stronghold. And what do they show? They show an Iranian leader Iran couldn't protect, and another leader currently in hiding. You are also wetted to Hezb and not Lebanon. This is what Lebanon stands for doing https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1506737/lebanon-submits-official-complaint-against-iran-to-unsc-for-first-time.html Lebanon as a country doesn't stand for Hezb or Iran. The majority detests both. Iranians might be principled individuals but the regime is not. The regime understands that they caught the US flat-footed unless the US is really willing to escalate adn the Iranian regime is trying to milk it for all it can. They are trying to get the most out of the US adn also show their proxies that they will stand by them...all this after Israel embarrassed Iran on the international stage with the elmination of Ali Khamenei, Nassralah, countless others. Let us not forget Ismail Haniyeh who was assassinated in Tehran. Also, what partial withdrawal? Israel is operating in Southern Lebanon and just captured a massive Hezb tunnel that included a drone factory. You've made your anti-Israel stance very clear. Fascinting how you are actually on the side of pro-terror organizations and a regime that is flat poison. But so it goes.

I have a few of these of my own.

I've seen a fair amount of people being called Nazis on the Internet, but for me, this post is the thing that feels the most Nazi-like of anything I've ever seen on the Internet. I think it's to do with that visceral imagery--dehumanization like "bloodthirsty animals" and demonization like "experts at killing women and children", mixed with "they play the victim". I think maybe the only way to make it a tiny bit closer is to add the word "vermin" somewhere in there. Neat that I've been surfing the internet for 30 years, and still managed to see a new extreme today.

It will be interesting how the export controls on AI products will impact the valuation and revenue trajectory of the LLM companies OpenAI and Anthropic . To me, it looks unlikely that the export control will be limited to Anthrophic since other LLM’s have similar capabilities , if not now, with a small time lag.

Sure. In my opinion, you can measure it two ways: a) every equity investment made, including control/take private positions, as well as CDS & equity hedges, or as in a) but exclude CDS & equity hedges. I am not counting TRS since in my opinion it is a share buy-back.

John, very simple thesis: over the next forty or fifty years, annual volume growth of 3-5%, pricing ahead of inflation, EBIT margin goes from 25% to something closer to Transdigm's 50%.

@changegonnacome, USSR was in no position to help Iran in 1979 since it invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Don't forget USSR fought a border war with China in the 1970s. USSR sure as hell would not and could not help Iran - already fighting a war in Afghanistan, anticipating a possible Chinese invasion in the Far East, and now fighting the US? If Khomeini was worried about a coup originating from the US embassy, he could have just demanded that the embassy personnel leave in 48 hours or 72 hours. Taking an embassy hostage is an act of war and had either Carter or Reagan had guts, Qum and Iranian regime would have ceased to exist. You refer to the old Bismarck saying - nations have no permanent allies, just permanent interests. Sure, but where is the sense of creating enemies? Why turn two nuclear powers into enemies? Given Iran's interference in its neighbors affairs for 2,500 years, it can hardly object or be surprised that other countries will interfere in its affairs! You contradict yourself. In one sentence you say that those who believe in benign intentions cease to exist, in the next sentence you state that claims death to Israel and US are rhetorical flourishes. So which is it? Using your logic, US and Israel should have each wiped Iran of the face of the earth given Iran's post 1979 behavior. You talk about deterrence as Iranian strategy, but again, Iran's strategy is not deterrence but aggression that is guaranteed to result in massive retaliation. Neither country, to my knowledge, expressed a desire to attack Iran before Iranians fired the first shot (Embassy occupation and funding Hezbollah.). You also conveniently ignore Hezbollah and Hamas attacks on Israel, since they are the opposite of deterrence. It is one thing to keep guard dogs, it is another to sic them on your neighbor. The former deters burglars, the latter invited shooting the dogs and the owner. Irans's actions have been since 1979 been the opposite of deterrence. They have been begging for a war.

Return on carrying value is useful but it has a limit, no? At some point if we are branded as an investment outfit meant to generate alpha, we really should be relying on market value, not benefiting from low carrying values that is only available due to unique factors that may or may not be repeatable. Really I just take a look at their equity investments and think, all-else-equal and in a vacuum, would I have invested in the same company at the same valuation? I ignore any complimentary debt investments being made, and I ignore most of any proposed 'synergies' or stuff like that. So I know for that reason alone I won't align with a lot of stuff Fairfax invests in. Frankly to me that is a bit of a bonus- I as an individual cannot make control investments, I cannot simultaneously finance an upstream bond offering at 10x the equity value, I do not have an ecosystem of other controlled businesses to cross-sell and such...all these factors that Fairfax and other conglomerates can benefit from...so if 30-40% of my portfolio has that type of exposure, and I self manage the remaining 60%, it seems like a reasonable approach to me.