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Check this out. https://www.amazon.com/Late-talking-Children-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465038344 https://www.amazon.com/Einstein-Syndrome-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465081401/ref=pd_sbs_d_sccl_1_3/142-2505292-2946855?psc=1

Yeah I think the old FAH was just a mistake. Helios makes a lot more sense as a partner and structure, but has had a hell of a time through covid, inflation, rising rates, the emerging markets fundraising cycle, the PE stranded asset problem, and the way US markets have dominated returns. In a way this is a bet that some of those trends stabilise or reverse, funds flow back to EM, and Helios 2026-2040 looks more like Helios 2004-2020 than Helios 2020-2025.

More TSLX below NAV.

Looking at msft

Specialists do amazing jobs, but there is also a need to give kids their space. One of our nephews used to get very frustrated as nobody would play monopoly with him (a favourite game), 'cause he was good at it, and way too competitive. It came to me to break dishes, swap the monopoly money out for Zimbabwe dollars, and play him for hours at a time, both of us picking up $200,000 at a time for passing Go . Sadly, he ultimately went into the computer industry .... c'est la vie! At boarding school, I wore orthopaedic boots as a kid, as I had extreme flat feet, and no arches; it doesn't go well when you're very junior, and now a target. However, you quickly learn to change the game, and there were no more objections after I dragged in a live mamba (poisonous snake) with one of its fangs buried in the heel of my boot. The boots were eventually replaced with oversized ankles and wide feet, that were great for water polo ... disabilities can also be opportunities. SD

The issue is that the sports content provider hold the cards and charge per viewer basically. So the Netflix advantage of having more scale really doesn’t work here.

Lol! Do you know if your parents were worried or you referred for an assessment? Thank you for this. I get very frustrated at times, but when I stand back I realise that my frustration is borne out of a supposed expectation of what a child should do at age x. My father says kids don’t follow a manual and develop at their own pace. Your son sounds a bit like mine. He too has some traits which might be a symptom to those who don’t know him. He probably had more of them when he was younger but has largely grown out of them. However my instinct is that, yes he is different, but it’s not autism. My feeling is that it is a speech delay which has knock on effects to other things which involve communication. I feel fairly confident, but I could be wrong. Until he speaks we won’t know for sure. Regarding the therapist who your son took to. Did she practise any kind of specific therapy like play based, or the Colorado method or ABA?

Thanks to @73 Reds @Parsad @thepupil and @lnofeisone for your replies. I’ll admit it has been a lonely slog. Couple of things, I’m from the UK, so everything has a waiting list! He’s on a development assessment (autism included) and hearing assessment waiting list. He also is with the NHS speech therapists who sees him bi-monthly. In addition, we have him seeing a private speech therapist fortnightly, she says that until something clicks, or you find a way to drag just a few communicative words out of him, you just have to wait and when it does come it will be a flood. She’s confident he will speak and that he understand a lot. She says that unlike many children she sees with speech issues, he is by some way the best natured and most attentive. No tantrums or anything like that. All of which is very encouraging. We have also approached school and mentioned his speaking, and that he has a communication delay, and we will be working to get him a classroom assistant for his first school year. I should also say that he is only partly potty trained even approaching four! Thankfully he was born at the very start of the school year and will be the eldest in class so he still has 14 months before he starts. Regarding autism diagnoses, I’ll admit I was and continue to be skeptical. I won’t go into it much, but I will say that in the course of my lifetime it was a debilitating condition recognisable at 100 yards, to something were the people who are autistic appear indistinguishable from anyone else. My worry about such a diagnosis at a young age is that it bounds him to lower expectation and differential treatment which is simply unnecessary and ultimately damaging. If I close my eyes, and think about him when he’s 25, I can see a well adjusted young man… provided he speaks because everything else fixes itself. It’s really the key to bringing on his behaviours. It’s a tough call, and I’m not arrogant enough to think I have it right, so that’s why he is part of the aforementioned programmes. If it becomes clear he does in fact have autism, or some other development issue, we can get whatever support he needs. I’m fortunate that he is obsessed with books. I have been reading to him but I need to do more of it, much more maybe. A few other things about him. He’s a twin! He has a brother who was also a late speaker, he didn’t speak until he was 3 and now he won’t shut up. His twin brother speaks for him all the time, and whilst he is kind and loving, his brother is a dominant character. Finally, I didn’t know this until we had children, but on my wife’s side there is a pattern of high IQ boys who speak late. At least three relatives who didn’t speak until 4 or 5 and who otherwise turned out fine and intelligent. So yes, a lot to think about, and even from the replies in this thread, it seems to be a more common that many know.

These things are just a swap with no expiry date, and a more frequent settlement schedule. But the real market isn't predictions, it's the institutional ALM market. Create a 'unit' with a nominal face value of 1,000 and a nominal term of 1,000+ (proxy for infinity) .... and you have a zero coupon bond with a duration of 1,000+ . Duration x change in yield between MTM intervals = MTM settlement. A duration of 1,000+ ..... multiple times higher than today's typical leverage. Viscous little bastards ..... SD

This is a great open-minded post. Open mindedness is incredibly rare when it comes to Trump.

There is also one area where many European countries have the US beat and that is something else not measured in $ and €'s.....and thats trust....many European countries when measured still have all the hallmarks of high trust societies - citizens trust in the institutions and trust in fellow citizens...if you've never experienced this you probably don't realize what a quality of life enhancer it is......the US in its period of economic outperformance over Europe has seen both those metrics degrade meaningful such that many surveys place it as now a medium to medium-to-low trust society.

Name 2 things you disagree with Trump on. You wouldnt even admit to disagreeing with him on an issue where he came out in opposition to your stated support. Do you support his cancelation of caps on overdraft fees?

What I don't understand with Amorepacific is how do you start with gross margins of 70% and end up with EBIT margins of 7%? Where did that money go?

@RichardGibbons, good point. A lot of the material is also fluid. I have already changed my ratings for Fairfax from the first article in the series above. I am not able to edit the longer articles on the site (I am locked out from editing) - so they stay frozen. But I do keep revising the articles in my book - so it captures all edits. I find publishing the individual articles provides a few benefits: Deadline: often I give myself a deadline with an article (or series). Publish whatever it is at the time. Heightened focus: no one wants to be "wrong" with what they publish. After I publish sometimes my brain works completely differently. It is weird. When re-reading an article on the board I often pick up a bunch of stuff I missed when doing edits pre-publication. My view is the book will never be "completed." (And one day I will move on to another hobby.) Thanks to you and @Maverick47 for the feedback. It is appreciated.

And here is QXO, which also had a strong close today

While we wait for Intel to go straight up (so far so good), we have two mini-head and shoulders bottoms to observe! One of them in our very own Fairfax Financial, which - as Spek had duly noted - had traced out a "not gonna happen, no way no how" giant head and shoulders top only to negate it and put in a bottom. Love it when that happens. Here's the FRFHF mini-head-and-shoulders bottom and she's a cutie

That is a shocking graphic.

+1 I mean Presidential US elections are purely binary and for most folks, the best of two choices they would not otherwise make. The fact that we support Trump does not mean we agree with, or like everything he does or says. Yet the opposition's most vocal point is "get Trump". Any wonder why socialists are taking over the Democratic party?

New starter positions in CME, MKTX and TW

Thanks @petec. Perhaps I’m a bit hypersensitive due to past experiences. Without knowing the finer details, a 50% discount to book value doesn't seem all that far-fetched given the performance over the last decade. It’s all the better, that you’re shedding some light on this. A peer comparison would indeed be a major undertaking. I took a look at South Africa a few years back, and Bidvest stood out to me as a company that "at least knows a bit about what it's doing", of course they are also at the mercy of major (macroeconomic) trends. Unfortunately I ended up trusting Fairfax’s expertise more than my own gut feeling in the March 2020 drawdown.

Sending you encouragement, @Sweet! You’ve got this, and getting professional assessments is a wonderful, proactive step. Every child truly blooms on their own timeline. My son will be 5 soon, and he didn't start speaking until he was 4, with his first full sentence coming around 4.5. Interestingly, his 2-year-old little sister actually beat him to her first sentence! On top of that, he is one of those amazing kids who can focus on Legos or Magna-Tiles for hours. Because of that unique mix, we naturally wondered about autism. We reached out to several specialists, and the wonderful news was that he was simply a late bloomer with a significant speech delay. It took a little patience to find the right fit, but after two years of speech therapy with a therapist he absolutely bonded with, he is thriving and catching up so fast! While he’s still working hard to bridge the gap with his Pre-K peers, his vocabulary is absolutely mushrooming right now. Hang in there! Trust your instincts, lean on the specialists, and celebrate every little victory along the way. You’re doing an amazing job!

Yeah, I think this is one of the key things I've got from reading this particular political board. Like, so many people online and offline seem to say that anyone who would support Trump is idiotic, ill-educated, and insane. You often hear the criticism that his supporters are too stupid to even realize that he's not on their side, but just working for himself. It never seems to occur to them that Trump can be a corrupt, self-dealing narcissist, and people might rationally conclude that he's better than the alternative. (That said, I think he's probably still worse than the alternative because of the second order effects--destroying democratic norms and causing to a socialist kickback that could cause immense harm. But the point is that if, without ad hominem attacks, you can't explain why a reasonable person would vote for Trump, then that's your failing, not theirs.)

Hi! At a very basic level yes the $8m and $104m numbers are right. However the $8m number is based on only one quarter, so it may be wrong. Also, it includes nothing for carry, which could be quite valuable. I would not compare the valuation of Helios with the other assets for three reasons. Helios can turn on a dime. One big fund, or one successful investment, could flip it to profitability. It is a very different animal to say Trone, a profitable medical devices distributor carried at 9.4x ebitda. For the majority of the other businesses, we have third party investor validation of the valuations. HFP have no real incentive to value Helios correctly. It is an intangible and it makes no practical difference whether it is carried at $0 or $50m or $100m. So long as they can defend the assumptions in the DCF, they probably don't spend all that much time on it. The other valuations, however, have to be defended and justified to LPs in a very different way. Finally, the share price is 50% of book value even if you exclude Helios completely. So it really is a free option. Peer comparison is a lovely idea but - done right - very time consuming! Pete

I'd suggest all at once, for your sake and for the overall quality. My reasoning is, when writing longer works over the course of many days, you might be changing something later in the book, and it'll trigger some thought at applies earlier. Like, you could've phrased something different, or have another example you're trying to illustrate, or there's a really elegant way to express something, or you could have tied the chapters together better if you'd done something slightly different earlier. If you serialize it, these cases will likely frustrate you beyond all reason. It's very annoying when you think of something really elegant, but can't include it because the moment is past. So, while serializing is better for the short term readers, I think all at once is better for the author and also the quality of the final work. For my style of writing novels, it makes a huge difference, because I'm all about making my characters suffer. And there's many cases where I'm thinking, "X happening will make them miserable", and then realize, "but if ten chapters earlier, I show that they went through something that made them particularly emotionally vulnerable to X, then it'll be excruciating."

Some more BTC