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Can you please define what you mean by equity portfolio? Are you talking stocks? Are you talking CDS/equity hedges (did well), equity hedges/shorts (did poorly) and TRS(did well)? What exactly are you trying to measure?

Fun & Games in Iran:

Thank you, @Marco Van Basten, We have enchanged about Safran before. I haven't got to it so far, lately because of health issues sucking up my time and my energy [think Maslow] as of lately, but health much better now [morphine isen't exactly a good fuel to running on while investing]. I will still take look at Safran. - - - o 0 o - - - Can you provide a just short pitch for why you are interested and owning GE by now? - Thank you in advance. [ Not much help in the GE topic here on CofB&F by now, I would say, but that may just be me.]

You should research and buy Safran and GE. (I am long both.).

Dude, you stated that the company owned a portfolio of 5 year bonds. So that's what I went on. Recently in the last couple of years, Fairfax disclosed or somebody stated on this board it was buying mortgages via KW at 8-10% yields. So in my opinion, your assumption of 4.2% annual return from fixed income portfolio is untenable and cannot be supported. Over the last 40 years, investment grade bond index returned 6.16% annual compounded return. So my assumption of 6% does not look unreasonable. My view which I am clearly articulating poorly is this: a) We have no idea how well the company's equity portfolio have performed over the long term. b) Using reasonable assumptions it is possible to show that the equity portfolio has underperformed the S&P 500 over the past 40 years, and similarly it is possible to show that it has outperformed. c) The equity portfolio is very unlikely to have materially outperformed the S&P over the past 40 years.

I agree with you, except the US and Israel did not take the high road, they took the stupid/suicidal road.

MOU that is now being called off because Israel went ahead and did what is good for Israel? Whay I enjoyed is the news of Israel capturing a huge network of tunnels paid for by Iran with estimates of several 100s of hezb fighters and drone operators running short on water and food.

I'm a bag holder here since September 2022. You think it's a hopeless case, so time to throw in the towel admitting defeat?

During about the last month or so, I have sold [all out] small positions in the following Danish mid and small caps : SOLAR.CPH - Solar A/S, RTX.CPH - RTX A/S, SPG.CPH - SP Group A/S, & NORTHM.CPH - North Media A/S. Loosers, laggards, or I just lost interest in and, or patience with them, or legacy stuff not bought by me, but by my sister in law before I took over for her [SOLAR], all, to move on.

Added shares during this week in the following companies, a few in each of them : CDI.PA - Christian Dior SE [CofB&F Investment Ideas forum topic], BAIN.PA - Société des Bains de Mer et du Cercle des Etrangers à Monaco S.A. [CofB&F Investment Ideas forum topic], WY - Weyerhaeuser [CofB&F Investment Ideas forum topic], ENTRA.OL - Entra ASA [Link] , & WALL B.STO - Wallenstam AB [Link]

https://x.com/ihtesham2005/status/2067336730693509150/video/1 Bill Ackman video, first half is a great pitch for owning Fairfax and second owning JOE (he talks about neither though)

And I 100% agree with this. I am lucky to have spent some 1-1 time with him and discussed investments with his team. will also be seeing /meeting him at a conference tomorrow. Excited! His book is my investment bible and assessing capital allocation is the most important aspect in my investment decision making.

Yeah, @Sweet, It's kind of pathetic. Politics is about getting stuff, sh*t done. Not about hanging out on SOME, bothering, pestering others.

Excellent point. The prospect of double digit returns without a sizable risk of loss of capital is an ideal investment for me personally. For more than ten years now I have set my personal expectations for investment returns at somewhere in the range of 6 to 8% annually. That’s the level that should allow me to reach my reasonable goals for income in retirement. I would be well satisfied with that result. Finding a candidate for inclusion in my portfolio that has outpaced this target for the last five years, with a realistic prospect of doing so for the future five years as well, is already “icing on the cake” for my personal needs, and as you note, the business model of Fairfax and current store of unrealized gains may well produce results skewed to the upside. Fairfax under Prem’s stewardship for 40 years has produced stellar annualized returns of roughly 19%. I don’t need Fairfax to produce anything like this for the next 40 years in order to achieve my personal wealth goals, and in fact, even the achievement of their current target of 15% would be far in excess of what I would hope for. I am reminded of Charlie Munger’s comment regarding Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett’s stewardship thereof, made sometime near the turn of the century:

I agree it’s hard to be precise but I find it an interesting endeavor. Personally, I would include the CDS, hedging, TRS all of it and not exclude them. They were decisions taken by management at the time to maximize risk reward of the model. So I would first calculate the all-in number and then if you wanted to strip out specific items you can. I don’t think it would be impossible to approximate a rough FI returns using historic financials (though it will take time and I may make an attempt), and if you have that number you will also have a directionally correct equity return. It would be nice if management did the hard work for us as I’m sure they have the numbers ~15% CAGR of equity compounding for 40 years is mind blowing and so is 19% of bvps and share price compounding for 40 years.

Now that its available to trade on IB, if there is any interested, I'm starting to build out korean financials for the entire KOSPI index. Looks like this. Still buggy but should see improvements every single week.

Would have been worth $4bn in theory...

Pretty much everyone knows Trump is lying, he basically says this stuff over and over about people he is dissatisfied with for one reason or another. I’ll admit it was funny in his first term but his whole shtick has gotten lame partly because he takes himself much more seriously this time around. Meloni too has been a bit of a drama queen in photos, deliberately pulling faces, which is mildly irritating. I like many of the policies of both, but for Trump specifically, I just don’t like him as a person - I’m sure he will be devastated!

Thanks. I have added in additional data since. Beneficial ownership filings globally (you'll see Berkshire's Japan holdings and Value Act's Japan holdings) Gradually adding mutual fund data one by one of famous funds. Gradually adding full financials. US was relatively easy to add. Working on Japan and Korea and eventually more Europe/Canada.

I hope you enjoyed the MOU in which Iran/US determined Israel’s faith. Please stop thinking Israel is anything more than the sugar baby in the relationship with US.

Thats what I was saying about being invested in the model than the stock/equity picking acumen of HWIC. If they manage to do that, it would be icing on the cake. Even a mere 5% annual gain on the equity book get you to double digit equity returns. And we already currently have billions in unrealized gains in the trunk(almost worth around 15% of total equity worth).

Thanks for proving my point about your absolute lack of understanding of this situation. You think you got something here? You are dropping a clip of DJT, the same DJT who is famous for his hypoerbole and claiming credit for sunrise and you are taking it this pitch as a Pentagon debrief? He is feeding his own brand and not arguing that Hamas, Hezb, or Iran are millitary masterminds. Thanks for confirming your entire worldview is built on 15-second social media clips.

“If it weren’t for the United States of America, with me … Israel wouldn’t exist right now. Israel would have been blown off the face of the earth 100% and every smart person in Israel knows that” -DJT https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/2066828883295371641/video/1?s=46

I think it is pretty much impossible to determine a rate of return on Fairfax’s equity book over the past 40 years. What do you include? CDS? Equity hedges? TRS? Some of these were risk management positions, others were investments? But we do know with certainty one thing: Fairfax’s share price compounded at 19% for the past 40 years (US$; dividends reinvested). That is elite performance. Clearly, Fairfax is doing a number of things exceptionally well. Fairfax has two businesses: Insurance Investments. We also know returns from the insurance business were weak pre-2010. As a result, I suspect investments have been an important driver of long term results. What did they return each year? No idea. And I don’t need to know… All I have to do is look at the stock price to know what I need to know. (Fairfax’s total performance has been elite.) I am a quickly becoming a Thordike desciple…. Capital allocation is the most important thing over the long term for a company like Fairfax. Capital allocation drives per share results over the long term more than anything. But assessing capital allocation is not easy - so most investors/analysts ignore it. Instead they focus on other things that are easier.

Well yes the mechanics of an issuer turning on the ability to 'BNPL' something after purchase is relatively easy, and has been done by issuers for many years (I think Amex, Citi, Chase all have had offerings live for years) but they have not made a dent into the integrated at checkout BNPL players. The interesting question is not whether they can create their own offering post checkout, it's WHY these offerings have basically been a 0 while the core BNPL players continue growing at 20%+ annually. A few reasons: (1) The offer AT POINT OF SALE is the product!! You need to offer this while someone is checking out for conversion to be impacted. It's a much harder change in behavior to say to someone "buy it like normal and then split it in our app". An installment plan activated in a banking app after you already bought the thing does none the conversion work. ... whether you think it should is beside the point. It's just clearly not a viable offer based on the fact that these products haven't worked. (2) The economics are all wrong. What makes the BNPL at checkout model work is that the merchant is willing to pay fees because BNPL increases conversion and basket sizes. They're willing to pay ~4% on a pay in four txn vs. 2-2.5% on a normal cc txn. If you are Chase and offering an installment plan post checkout, you are taking on the same amount of risk as a BNPL provider, but not getting paid anything by the merchant to do so. For the group of consumers that would want to use this product, it becomes uneconomic (can you really compete with Klarna or Affirm when they get 4% from the merchant and you don't??) ... further, the lifeblood of the subprime issuers is the revolving interest on balances. Why would you transition someone from that highly profitable product to a much less profitable offering (installment loans). And if the issuers decided to charge substantial interest on the installment loans, why would a consumer use the product when they could get the same loan from Klarna or Affirm at a much better price because the merchant is paying a large chunk (or all) of the fee? (3) Because you are underwriting every transaction, Klarna and Affirm can reach consumers the credit card companies can't. For example, a thin-file consumer can get accepted for a $200 bnpl loan but would never be accepted for a $5k line of credit. Therefore, if a cc company can't bring in a customer on a normal LOC, they won't be able to offer them this post purchase installment product either. The beauty of the BNPL model is the reunderwriting of every transaction. the moat is that the loans are (a) merchant-funded (b) at point-of-sale (c) each txn is reunderwritten (d) signing agreements with all the merchants who have specific / custom terms that work for them and their customer base (e) the model puts Affirm and Klarna in front of consumers who have traditionally been excluded from the credit card ecosystem so there's a legitimate case that these consumers are incremental to merchants and improve conversion.