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Sold more MIAX. Bought on way down recently, and got decent profit. I just can't get high enough conviction. I see the bull case, but don't have high enough conviction - can see a view that the exchanges aren't strong enough to last long-term. Probably wrong, but there's other stuff I feel more comfortable in.

Yup. Why should it take a non-resident, non-interested, fair minded person like you (@Sweet) to recognize that we have a problem? People that don't want to acknowledge that federal elections should be done consistently, with proper identification EVERYWHERE only have one objective - to bash Trump (and to cheat). Even his supporters admit that he lies. He's a promoter. I take the bad with the good - that being many ideas that all of his predecessors combined were too blind even to try. There is one, singular metric that I use to measure Trump and his presidency: Have the issues I care about most improved since election day? On that score the answer is overwhelmingly yes.

Sold my DIA.MI (DiaSorin S.p.A.) position

I've met you - and I know how reasonable you are. That doesn't mean you should trust me. If I am wrong, I want to know it, even if I look like a chump. I figured you will not let anyone bullshit you. And I agree - Trump can be a huge bullshitter. And I totally agree about the Trump appointed judges and many other Trump "supporters" in his Executive Branch that took the easy (or flawed) way out. In 2020, leading up to the Presidential Election, I had an argument with a close friend who tried to convince me that the election COULD be stolen. I told him that there was NO WAY a Federal Election could ever be stolen.... and could only occur in Cook County or City of Chicago - There were far too many safeguards in Federal Elections for fraud to occur - and our Federal courts would never allow it. We are going to find out - and every American should be reassured one way or another.

I was trying to point out that there are buyers of memory that are not "hyperscalers"

I remember when my late grandfather was on his deathbed, surrounded by family, his final gasp of life was something like, "Oh my children, I love you so much, I am so proud of you...but I would be just a little more proud if you remembered to de-register me from the state voter registration database immediately upon my passing! MAGA baby, Woooo!!!" I like to think my grandpops would laugh at that!

Thanks for sharing that context. For me, it really comes down to trust. Trump makes a lot of claims that don't seem to hold up under independent scrutiny, so I just don't take his word for it. I prefer to wait for the legal process, and what convinces me is that even Trump-appointed judges and conservative Republican election officials looked at these exact claims and said there wasn't evidence to change the results. If this is really all hocus pocus, then going on national television with it is using the power of the presidency to undermine faith in the system.

Trump is selling early access to his market moving posts that he does exclusively on the platform he owns. Would love to hear anyone explain how that's not corrupt. https://www.ft.com/content/e466df85-fa3b-4a7f-a4a1-ae04d66db99f?shareType=nongift

Thanks everyone for weighing in - a few of these answers, especially the concrete numbers around BV/cat losses etc., really helped clear my thinking on this.

100%!! May the best man win - Republican, Democratic or Independent. Americans WANT a level playing field.

Therefore, you believe that non-citizens, dead people, those that move out of state - can vote in Federal Elections if it is ok with the State. Got it @LC! The courts will determine whether States have a right to conduct fraudulent Presidential elections.

Trump absolutely is a liar, but looking from outside, the election system seems like a mess to me. And the idea that you just shrug, when a large percentage of the electorate believe elections cannot be trusted, I think that’s a bad attitude. Best way to own Trump on this is to tighten up voting laws and when he still loses he won’t have a leg to stand on. But it’s not just a Trump thing, we had years of claims that the 2016 election was rigged from the Dems when Trump first won.

He talked about the proof. 4 states have confirmed in conjunction with the DOJ that 278,000 illegal aliens are on the voter rolls. Extrapolate the number to another 46 states. The majority of blue states are refusing to cooperate with the DOJ on how many illegals are on their own voter rolls - as I have posted with the Wisconsin lawsuit. Trump summarized the massive fraud operation uncovered in Michigan. Democrats paying volunteers to bring in fraudulent NEW voter registrations. Will spare you the details. I've have also posted about the Georgia FBI investigation and the admission of Georgia Election officials that were silenced about multiple vote counting violations. In addition, DHS found 400,000 active voter registrations on 23 state voter rolls for dead people.

Ah yes, the dept of justice BELIEVES...and therefore needs access to data they would otherwise not be entitled to. Wasn't MAGA totally against this weaponizing the DOJ when it was the Steele dossier and all that crap? Why didn't DOGE put a stop to these wasteful, frivolous lawsuits? Otherwise, hey, I believe Trump is a rapist, therefore I need access to his blood samples, saliva samples, financial records, travel records, communication records...blahblahblah. It's all bullshit politics, let's not pretend it's anything otherwise.

As a rule of thumb, roughly 70% of AI data center spend is on chips. So if the hyperscalers spend $1 trillion in data center CAPEX next year, that's $700 billion on chips in total. DRAM and NAND memory revenue estimates alone are $1 trillion next year so the math according to the analysts' own projections isn't mathing.

I’d want it proven in a verifiable way first. If there's real evidence, let's see it in court. But making those claims on national TV without proof just hurts public trust, which is what worries me.

A serious question. If you believed there was fraud, would you still find it sickening?

As someone who values institutional stability to hear a president on national television challenging the legitimacy of a past election is sickening. What is it about our system that only gives us a dangerous clown on the right or a party that doesn’t understand how the world works on the left?

The only thing I’ll add on a personal note is that in over 30 years in the industry, with managing catastrophe exposure at the top of my responsibilities, there were at least three separate years in which inappropriate management of investments and poor management of the interest rate risk impact on fixed bond portfolios damaged the company I worked for more severely than the catastrophe risk that I was focused on ever did. Two of those events happened since 2000 — the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 and the increase in interest rates in 2022. The first resulted in the company I worked for being bought out by a larger competitor. The second resulted in sales of non core subsidiaries and employee layoffs in a successful effort to rebuild the capital base and reduce the expense levels going forward. I was fortunate enough to be a “casualty” in the second event. By virtue of severing my employment relationship a few years earlier than I would have chosen had I been left to my own devices, I received access to my retirement account years earlier than if I hadn’t been laid off. I rolled it over to a self directed retirement account and put the lion’s share into Fairfax and Berkshire, two companies I knew had not made the same mistakes my own employers had. The market value increase in Fairfax alone since then has been the equivalent of five years of my previous annual salary level. So I definitely do have a soft spot in my heart for the company and what it has meant to me personally.

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.