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The Hill [July 16th 2026] : White House suspends teleprompter operator accused of placing bets on speeches: ‘Disgrace’ - - - o 0 o - - - So much for betting on insider knowledge as a maybe poor man working on POTUS' telepromter, with perhaps really not so much means - 'disgrace' - It's almost killing me!

looks like buybacks have started up again!

I agree on the NBA enjoyment, was just highlighting the game is played different today and requires different types of players. You don’t see Shaq like players anymore and instead have more athletic leaner more dynamic players Wemby….all started with Dirk and Durant pushing limits.

Correct - and that is precisely why you can keep a franchise quarterback healthy these days. IF those rule changes had not been enacted - you would go through quarterbacks like diapers - and the NFL would be destroyed. Today's defensive players are far stronger, faster and bigger. Different strokes I guess. I still enjoy the game, but those 80/90's Knicks/Celtics battles, Bulls/Pistons battles were so fun and so physical. Players like Rodman, Ewing, Malone, Oakley, Mahorn, Mason - they would foul out every game. Those were really fun games for fans. More like Canadian Hockey!

Not to mentioned the degradation of the core FANG/MAG whatever stocks as they shift from net cash, high margin, asset lite companies to more debt burdened, asset heavy, capex beholden ones.

@djokovic1, thanks for sharing your presentation. I thought it laid out the thesis very well. At a high level, the story is very straight forward. Well done!

Always good to challenge assumptions, ask questions, consider the downside risk of any investment @RRR! When I think about this in regards to Fairfax, I consider a number of factors. AM Best is an insurance company rating agency that considers how secure and financially stable an insurer is. They have been granting upgrades to Fairfax over the years, with the last major upgrade in 2025. Take this with a bit of a grain of salt though, because before the GFC, AM Best had assigned their highest ratings to both Berkshire Hathaway and AIG. They missed the danger lurking in AIG Financial Products, which would have taken the company down absent a government bailout… One insurance tail risk is if the loss reserves are set at an inadequate level. Fairfax’s history indicates that their general approach to setting reserves is for them to be much more likely to be redundant than inadequate. Another is future likelihood of weather catastrophes. Tough to know for sure, but based on computer modeling, Fairfax has been reducing their tail weather catastrophe risk over time as a percent of supporting equity. My guess is they have a billion or two of redundant loss reserves which means their equity is understated by that same amount. Similarly, they have about $4 billion of fair market value excess of assets compared to where those assets are carried in terms of book value. They are prudently managing their exposure to catastrophe losses relative to their equity base. Over time, the increased allocation of investments to common stocks may well result in a Berkshire type situation where the market value of their common stocks regularly grows faster than the natural growth in the underlying insurance premiums, making the company even more safe and secure relative to claims obligations over time than it is now. But if there is a period of volatility with the equity investments, and a seriously large negative market value move, how might the company respond? I think we’ve already seen this in the early 2000’s when they chose to sell minority stakes of their crown jewels, Odyssey and Northbridge, buying the minority interests back once the company had recovered. I think the good thing about Fairfax to me is that they are a learning organization. They faced an existential crisis during the early 2000’s and the short seller attacks. They learned from the lost decade of hedges and shorts after the GFC. They are building a margin of safety into their shareholder equity book value, and have developed solid partnerships with organizations such as OMERS who can help provide capital if needed in the future.

@RRR, welcome. Good question. Here are some thoughts: The key to your question is how you define risk. Is it: Volatility? Chance of permanent loss of capital? This also ties in to time-frame: short term (less than three years) or medium term (more than three years)? Another key is type of equity: Mark to market Associate Consolidated More than 50% of Fairfax’s equity holdings are associated and consolidated… meaning a big decline in the market averages will have a more muted impact on reported results. Another key is opportunity. Fairfax often makes their best investments when volatility is at extreme levels.

That is a wonderful read.

Thanks for fixing my typo

Fixed it for ya

Wall street estimates that SK, Samsung and Micron will earn more than $700 billion pre-tax next year. Apply a 70% pre-tax margin and that implies $1 trillion in total revenues - that's more than the ~$700 billion in total CAPEX from hyperscalers this year. People have completely lost all sense of math and common sense to rationalize this bubble.

They started buying after the Antitrust case win last year correct? If ChatGPT and the government can’t put a dent in the search monopoly, what can? Furthermore, if competitors couldn’t do it before how will they do it now after the compute spending? He also said all you need to know is that a good high ROIC business will last and the worst thing you can do is over complicate things. Sure all of this spending isn’t ideal, but if it deepens the moat and allows for high ROIC for longer then it’s a good thing to do. Seems to apply to Google to me. He kept saying the probability that high profits will continue long into the future is by far the most important thing. Not so much about buying at $150 vs $350. Just my 2 cents.

I mean I think the most awe inspiring aspect of this is that you can look back, 3-5 years and just chart "AI spend". Clearly, 2026 is a massive, massive FOMO binge, and 2027 likely will be too. Maybe even 28 as well. But in terms of a total capital expenditure cycle, what is insane and jaw dropping is seeing investors gamblers and such, citing what is clearly within an earshot of whatever one would call "peak", especially for crappy cyclical commodity stuff like chips/memory, and then taking THOSE numbers, and extrapolating valuations based on historic multiples. In what universe has it ever been a good idea to invest like that? "Ah, only 15x 2026 numbers"...like WTF? You expect 15 years of this sort of mania?

When I worked in Brasil this guy (king of the floppers) was grinning on damn near every TV commercial.

Situation can get out of hand quick. Me and the buck were lucky that this was so easy in comparison.

The bench is deep at CoBF. Meanwhile, I'm slinging beer and hot dogs in the stands.

memory is still probably cyclical so a low PE might signal the cycle top. I would agree MU could tank a lot more here.

NFL - The game has completely changed due to rule changes. The game is far less violent today than it used to be 15-20 years ago. NBA - The game and how it's played is just completely different. It's much more dynamic today than when Jordan played in the 90s. You can see the transition of the game by watching early 2000's- 2010's. Nothing wrong with it, just a different game. But the focus on individual skill vs team IQ has exacerbated the flopping.

yeah i don't see the Mag7 hyperscalers to keep increasing capex 30% per year for the next 5 years, they would need to start seeing return on their capital. So the market is forward looking and started to sell these AI names that were trading at hundreds of times sales knowing capex won't go up forever.

A few years ago I got a call from a neighbor who was at work to go over and check on his wife - she was in the back yard and their large dog was stuck on the fence. The dog was hanging on the fence and when she went to help him he got scared and bit her in the eye-lid and it was hanging off and bleeding everywhere and she was freaking out. I broke the fence boards so the dog could be freed without getting bit myself and took the neighbor lady to the ER where they stitched her up and later she got plastic surgery to fix her eyelid. Sheesh

I watched the part of the interview on Google but it was hard to follow (I'm slow today). Buffett also didn't reveal too much. Anyone have any insights? It seems like he looked at Google's competitors and thinks Google has the upper hand in this race. Said the others in the Mag 7 are playing a game they don't necessarily want to be playing. Wonder if it is something like his bet on newspapers where the dominant scale player attracts the most advertisement.

They certainly are resilient. We're a bunch of pussies in comparison. Opposable thumbs for the win.

It's a shame. Even something that was once super exciting; the dead spring between a forward and a defenseman to negate an icing call in an NHL game, ruined by stupid rules(no touch icing) that promote laziness in the name of "player safety".