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VERY well done @LC . The reason I admire you besides your wicked sense of humor is you won't let me slide on the facts. I am often wrong, however embarrassing it may be. It's more complicated than this. The CoBF board deserves and will benefit from the TRUTH - instead of slams like "Trump is a dictator", "Trump is shredding the US Constitution", etc. Perhaps if we focus on facts, we get to the TRUTH - and then each members can form an opinion. Yes, that is the response of the Wisconsin Election Watch - meanwhile, the DOJ lawsuit regarding the actual integrity of the Wisconsin voter rolls continue. Attached is the lawsuit making its way through the US Federal Courts: "USA vs Wisconsin Election Commission" July 7, 2026 filing. https://www.wpr.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/USA-v-WEC-Emergency-Motion.pdf The net is this: DOJ believes there is significant fraud in Wisconsin voting - signing up illegals, mail in ballot abuse, etc, etc. The DOJ is demanding unfettered access to State Drivers license records, SS#'s, that are associated with the Voter databases - so they can cross-check against fraud. The State possesses this information on the voter rolls, but refuses to provide them to the Feds. Excerpt from lawsuit doc: Wisconsin's next federal election is rapidly approaching, the primaries set for August 11, 2026, and the general election to take place on November 3, 2026. Weeks before November 3, election officials will be mailing absentee ballots to hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin voters, with many of those ballots potentially going to ineligible voters, fraudulent registrants, or other individuals who should not have been registered. Wisconsin voters need to know that their election is secure and that non-citizens, deceased individuals, former residents, non-residents, and voters with multiple records are not registered to vote in that election. You have my respect. Thanks.

Any opinion on CBOE ? I started looking into it and the numbers are looking good as compared to others. It has gained a bit from there recent draw down. Their cost optimization may be a positive, but the 24 hours NDAQ and the kalshi competition seems to be a headwind

To add to what @Maverick47wrote. They use dollar limits too so even in some crazy cat event they should come out ok. In fact, the premium growth would be huge so would probably lead to multiple expansion soon after and higher forward returns because of the hard market. It’s definitely risk, but it’s not as risky as it’s perceived. Others have posted this chart but I think it also shows that FFH hasn’t been increasing its cat risk. My understanding is they took price but didn’t increase exposure. A lot of premium growth has come from the E&S market parts of which are now also soft.

Thanks that puts it in perspective

Bought more $25 CPNG LEAPS

What sort of worldwide catastrophe could do this? Currently, Fairfax manages its modeled weather and property insurance related catastrophe exposure (hurricanes, storms, wildfires, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc) and controls its business such that less than once in 250 years (less than 0.4% probability in any given year) the aggregated catastrophe losses might approach 15% of equity. Since in a typical year, they expect to earn a 15% return on equity, this essentially is the same as saying they wouldn’t earn a profit in such a year, and equity would remain flat, not anywhere near going to zero. Suppose Fairfax is exposed to roughly 1% of the world’s insured catastrophe losses (probably roughly right) then it would take $500 to $600 billion of global insured catastrophe losses for Fairfax’s equity not to grow in a given year, but for total shareholder equity to remain untouched. That’s the sort of year we would expect to happen perhaps once every 350 years or so. How do you erase $30 billion of Fairfax shareholder equity through global catastrophes? You’d need global insured catastrophe losses to be roughly 7 times that size, or perhaps $3.5 to $4.2 trillion. That’s an industry extinguishment level of losses, with perhaps only Berkshire and a few insurers that didn’t have any property insurance exposures surviving. Even Berkshire couldn’t write all the business that the failed industry could no longer cover, so there would have to be a recapitalization of almost the entire primary property insurance and reinsurance industry, assuming the remaining civilization and global economy was in a state that would even need insurance any more. It could “happen” sure…but so could an asteroid strike similar to the one that killed off the dinosaurs 60 million years ago, or a Yellowstone super volcano eruption that happened 640,000 years ago. If anything like this happens, and I am still even alive myself, I think that the performance of my investment portfolio, including Fairfax, is not going to make the top ten list of things I’d be worried about.

Ki is fundamentally a superior business to the more flashy Lemonade. all fairfax holders should be intrigued with what Ki is doing within the Insurtech space.

Great reference Very telling that 2 of the main networks refused to carry Trumps live time speech last night ... and today he's calling for both of them to have their licences pulled. Even with today's rants .... vs the world cup finals coming up; a lot of people are simply turning the dial. Yesterdays, 'old man', fish and chip wrapper SD

Fairfax leverage is still fairly risky even if it’s float though right? If there is a really bad worldwide catastrophe event Fairfax could easily have its entire book equity taken to zero. BRK with 0.5 float leverage would likely be hurt badly but would immediately be maybe one of the few underwriters writing new business on earth. Am I wrong in thinking this?

This is what I love about you cubs, you never allow facts to get in the way of your opinion:

Locked in some profits on the AI chip short and bought a bunch of Netflix

Some NFLX Leaps. Still growing, share repurchases, many levers to grow.

What dollar amount of memory will Apple buy? Is that included as a "hyperscaler" ? What about Dell, etc?

The same consensus estimates have hyperscaler CAPEX hitting $1 trillion next year. So all of it's gonna be memory spend? These guys are twisting themselves in knots trying to make up numbers that just don't make sense.

added to CMCSA and bought starters in NFLX and INTU.

Total Bullshit. A Federal Election is a Federal Election. Fraud is Fraud. Hillary Clinton claimed multiple times the 2016 was rigged and stolen from her. The 2004 Presidential Election , 32 Democratic Congressional members, claimed the election was rigged and fraudulent. The 2016 Election, multiple Democratic Congressional members, claimed fraudulent results in multiple states won by Donald Trump. What are you excuses for Democratic lawmakers and politicians for trying to block George Bush and Donald Trump for their Presidential wins??

Lame duck minus the crepes and Hoison sauce has never been particularly appetizing. The difference today is the opposing party is completely out of whack and stands for little or nothing.

Orange Boy loses the midterms .... his carcass will rapidly start to stink up the place. Those various straddles on the mans sudden demise suddenly start appreciating, and accelerate as the various Trump 'edicts' start being wound back. All that 'distracting' ...... bringing the day forward. SD

the key point missed here is that voting in the US is governed and managed at the state level not the federal level. Different states do voting differently. Some states (like Oregon) are entirely vote by mail and have been for a long time. Other states do almost all in person voting and are more restrictive. This act effectively looks to overlay federal management on a process that works extremely well. In fact you would struggle to point to any significant voter fraud at all. The sole reason this is even a discussion is because Trump lost and therefore thinks the election must have been rigged (despite his being President during the entire run up to and during the election). It tries to solve a problem that doesn't exist and in doing so makes it more difficult for many to vote.

Bought some NFLX @ sub 66

@John Hjorth That is an excellent summary. Most of this is very common sense. Note on a "fine" point like voter roll purges,,, for example, in my neighboring state of Wisconsin, there are 7.1M registered voters, while actually only 4M possible voters. The 3M "excess" are dead, moved, etc, etc - that need to be purged off the voter roll - but Wisconsin refuses to do that. This leaves it very easy for voter fraud to occur in a close race by "finding" new votes. Biden won Wisconsin by 21,000 votes. The case I mentioned in Georgia, where 11,800 votes decided the election for Biden - is the reason the FBI seized 700 boxes and the tally tapes. Those original votes are now in the possession of the FBI after several Georgia election officials testified to multiple irregularities during vote counting. You can believe @dwy000 and his magic show - or you can just wait for the actual data.

Hey a sale! Sandisk SSD discounted from $1459 to $599!

No question about Fairfax; however, the current Berkshire price has me placing some small orders for the first time in years. While the graph below is more of a market anchoring mechanism. I think, after the interview the other night, the timing is pretty clear on what this has all been building towards in terms of buybacks. No offence to Tom, but he still leaves me cold in terms of the babble speak. I am sure they will do OK, but the other two are laser-focused. Fairfax is a no-wholes-barred capital allocation/recycling machine. Berkshire is an inertia machine with the patience of Jobe and a right tail that builds as long as this market does its whacky thing. I do think that Berkshire shareholders will gain somewhere between 0.25-0.5% because of Greg giving some rigour and accountability to the existing assets. That is probably what has piqued my interest more than anything. My capital is on Fairfax winning the compounding race over the next 10-15 years, but I am sure second- and third-place do well too. I still wouldn't rule out Berkshire surprising, simply because they are playing a game in terms of FI and dry powder that the other two simply aren't.

Now we have these two opposing statements from two CofB&F members, Mike [ @cubsfan and @dwy000, I'm trying to understand the situation and what's going on related to it, despite I'm an ignorant Northern European citizen related to election legislation and procedures in USA. I'v tried using Google AI to shed some light on the whole thing : - - - o 0 o - - - Is the above a fairly correct description of the proposal? Thank you in advance to those who may reply here, because I'm not going to spend time in the progression tracking and its texts.

Well, obviously Capex will have to increase to hit these numbers. If you do the math and think this through then a trillion $ in Capex needs at least $500B in revenue to sustain it - assuming $150-$200B in depreciation , a meager $100B in profit (10% ROIC), and a 50% gross margin. It’s not going to come from coding and making slide decks or marketing material and graphics.