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As usual, for the most part I agree and do tend to look at look at things from a Western-centric POV. But this is because I believe our POV is largely correct and the best model for a free, prosperous, peaceful World. There is no reason to eliminate, cultures, customs, histories, alliances, religious practices, and fundamental beliefs as long as they don't threaten and infringe on the rights of others. History teaches us that this can largely be accomplished through deterrence but the exceptions like Iran have to be dealt with more directly unless we want another 47 years of fundamental fanaticism. For me its about time. Because of its success, the US has a unique role in the World. Nothing says the role can't be shared and in time it will.

The odds are not great but payoff is asymmetrical . The Soxx looks very overextended with many crapola stocks mooning.

I like this idea. Never thought about doing that.

The 2-year note at 4.23% and rising seems awfully bullish for Fairfax. Especially with inflation break-evens, swaps and *yikes!* "truflation" all diving back to the harmless zone.. Seems kinda like a gift. I wonder if even Berkshire will give their government bill auction guy a bit of a break and let him buy some 1 and 2 year notes https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T5YIE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10YIE

This appears to be Fairfax / Odyssey buying some additional AGTF in the open market last week

It's why for me personally while the stock stays at these levels. If they used every dollar of cash flows to keep buying back shares I would be a happy camper. I clearly don't know or can't see the upside in what they are doing with these equity acquisitions and although it wouldn't be a mortal blow to the company if they didn't work out, just like Equity hedges and shorts did not, it sure would be at a tremendous opportunity cost. Let's say $3B was allocated here, unless it's worth well over $6B in 5yrs or so time. Buying back almost 10% of the company would have proven to be the best alternative.

@RichardGibbons, you make a great point - it is complicated. Not just for Prem/Fairfax but for any company. It gets to the heart of what makes assessing management so difficult - it qualitative and comes down to judgement. As a result, two investors looking at the same information could come to very different conclusions. In my framework (right or wrong), much of my analysis is weighted to the past 5 years. Years 6 to 10 matter, but much less. More than 10 years is interesting but much less relevant (for me). It is important people understand that when they read my stuff. If I had completed the management chapter in late 2020 it would have had a very different tone. Fairfax is very active - buying and selling. They are involved in a number of transactions every year. Volume alone is going to put them in a tough spot every once in a while. Not that I am trying to make excuses for past behaviour. My view that Fairfax has moved up the quality ladder when making new purchases should help (if true). Taking companies private also helps. Buffett is an interesting comparison. He also had a few big stumbles over the years. Those are largely forgotten. Understanding Fairfax's long history pretty well, I am just so happy with where the company is at today.

Good OP. I've tracked my performance vs the S & P for 25 years. Then it dawned upon me it doesn't matter. If you need 8% returns to make your goals, go for it, and make it as safely as you can. Who cares what every one else is doing?

Messi - 5 ARG goals in two games - all from Messi. At 38! I have fallen in love with soccer in the last few years.

The integrity dimension is an interesting one, because the Fibrek transaction was a bit sketchy--deliberately supporting a low bid when there was a much higher bid on the table. That was ruled by the courts to be legal. However, for me, it doesn't pass the "high integrity" test. There was also an insider trading investigation, but that was eventually dropped. It's unclear to me if the insider trading allegations were a case of "it happened, but couldn't be proven enough for charges" or "people were annoyed at completely innocent Watsa and Rivett, so decided to pursue regulatory revenge against them", or anywhere in between. As far as I know, Watsa's never done anything unethical that hurts shareholders of the various Fairfaxes. In sum, to me, that means on the spectrum of integrity, he's certainly well within the "integrity" half, but I wouldn't put him as far on that side as Buffett. (e.g. Buffett doesn't just avoid being unethical, but also tries really hard to avoid looking unethical.)

I wonder what the statistics are on having to hit on BOTH (1) making money buying an option, and (2) betting against a bull market. Any oddsmakers here?

Fist time buying puts - some 2027 SOXX. And some FFH, MELI

Being big and strong and as powerful as you can be - its the definition of optimizing for regime survival/persistence over time. Kind of......most countries are too small and too unimportant to matter in the system.....they live under the shade of the large nations who are playing these games of relative power and security....as they eye each other up around intent, capability etc. Your view of the world is I would argue is clouded by two things....first a lifetime is a relatively short period of time....you grew up in the Unipolar moment (as I said its as close to stability and world police + peace the world has known)....and number two we all live in America (i know you lived or spent some time in Israel)......but the US is the regional hegemon....it has achieved (through not insignificant violence and relative power moves i might add) the Nirvana of security....it is the regional hegemon in the Western Hemisphere nobody can challenge it in anyway.....which is why nobody loses a wink of sleep in the US at the night worried about our neighbours.....we are simply too powerful for them to consider challenging us in anyway. The dream for Israel would be to wake up in the Middle East in this situation......taking Iran of the chess board would be a BIG step in this regard. China dreams of the same thing in East Asia.....and we have policy of ensuring that never occurs..Why?......the logic goes that a power who achieves regional hegemony in their part of the world is then free to "roam".....what does roam look like....say like the United States roams (with 800 military bases in 80 countries) across the globe getting involved in all manner of local security competitions....sometimes doing good (WWII/Marshall plan) but broadly causing chaos via unintended consequences. The US's main security challenge over the next hundred years is ensuring China is contained within Asia that it could never consider "roaming" into the Western Hemisphere. . I think thats right....but only when applied to lower middle powers and lower powers...the other Gulf states for example (the Omans etc.) live like this but even they manage alliances with etc with regional powers (its why the smaller Gulf States will hedge tail risk by playing ball with Iran even after being bombed by them). The cool kids these days have a name for naitons like this....they are called NPCs....It stands for Non-Player Character (the background characters in video games that you can't control, like shopkeepers or random townspeople who just repeat the same lines of dialogue). The world is indeed full of NPC countries...but even they need to manage relative power via sensible alliances with MPCs!

Regime survival and maximizing relative power are two entirely different concepts and if you remove any degree of selfish motive from the mix, neither is particularly important (if at all) to Iran's future. No one is threatening the existence of most countries and most countries are not a threat to anyone else. Ironically, those who make direct threats are the least successful in terms of quality of life of their people and pretty much every other way most would define success; coincidence? But that is looking at the issue rationally, the way most of the World would view it because most of the World simply wants to co-exist in peace. Those who don't for any reason are not acting rationally the way most of the World would define it.

I defined it already but not clearly enough maybe. Rationality at the State level as regards security- is about engaging in activities that optimize basically two things.....regime survival/persistence overtime and connected to that maximizing your relative power in that State system or league of nations (remember in international system when you call 911 nobody answers, its a self-help system and so like my mother told me "God helps those, who help themselves" and as a State then you should be at every opportunity maximizing your strength and leverage with whatever resources you have at your fingerprints because fundamentally you are on your own and its a big bad world out there).....thats it....thats how i define rationality at the State level. The 'Free World' is fantasy, its held together with sticky tape and hot air from polticans mouths - the system is inherently anarchic....we spent much of our lives in the Unipolar moment with the US as close as it comes to being the Global Hegemon.......this period is the closest the international system ever comes to having a world police force & court system where when you call 911 somebody in the UN or DC picks up the phone (but I mean ask Rwanda about dialing 911 even then). That Unipolar moment is fast disappearing and we are returning to multi-polarity.....the great aberration in history will be this 1945 to ~2017 period.

Smoke won't come out of my head, LOL but we are discussing one country that values human life and one whose leadership does not. Therefore, any talk of whether the country that doesn't value human life is acting rationally is only as sensible as how you define "rational" - as per my earlier post. Do THEY believe they are acting rational within the perverse universe of their ideology? Of course they do - that I think was Trump's point. But that definition of "rational" is wholly inconsistent with participation in today's Free World. Looking at the issue any other way only lends itself to continued conflict and turmoil, which is precisely what we are trying to stop.

100%......and the blue sky scenario for Israel (and I hope it happens) is that Iranian regime actually becomes the carcuture that is sold by Bibi in D.C......which is to say that they actually start acting IRRATIONALLY and do something that rises to the level that would spur nations with the capability to destroy them (i.e the US) to make the investment to remove them......the mass use of chemical weapons for example or a massive terrorist attack on US soil. If Iran was a 'death cult' these would have happened already and Islamic Regime would have been removed. I'm certain one of the hopes coming out of Epic Fury in Tel Aviv - was that by killing the rational layer of Iranian leadership an irrational layer would emerge to replace them that would do something so stupid that it would generate the popular support required in the US to greenlight the boots on the ground regime change war that is needed here.

Hence why nuclear weapons are fundamentally a defensive weapon, the ultimate deterrent. I know smoke will come out of your head - but if Iran got a nuke, it wouldn't actually use it unless an existential threat forced it to use it to survive. THIS would suit Iran down to the ground. What you've described is essentially the 'ring of fire' proxy strategy Iran has had in place for Israel for a couple of decades now.....Israel resources are endlessly consumed in low level friction extinguishing threats on its borders...the result is those resources aren't available to expand its relative military power in the region beyond its immediate neighbour i.e. the ring of fire is about containing Israel's aspirations toward regional hegemony which would diminish Iran's regional relative power. The US has a containment strategy for China - its South Korea, Tawain, Japan etc. etc. Iran has a containment strategy for Israel (& by extension the US in the region) - that containment strategy is Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and previously Syria. This whole exchange was about whether Iran is a rational actor versus the caricature of them as somehow irrational suicidal death cult - and of course this whole back and forth was triggered by President Trump saying out loud that they are rational the argument I've made now with alot of detail is they are brutally rational and that rationality has been brutality effective when seen through the lens of regime survival....which is not be confused with whether they are moral or admirable (they aren't).

I agree. I think Israel can put up a good fight but it lacks the necessary strenght to do anything in Iran and it will 100% become a pariah state. Israel's best capability here is to do what Iran does and that is engage in assymetric warfare.

The same can be said of any country with nuclear capability. You are ignoring the third option (though I don't necessarily agree that Israel could not go it alone in Iran without using nuclear weapons). It could continue laying waste to anyone who threatens and attacks its borders as it has done throughout its entire existence. Not optimal, but it has worked thus far even though the costs have been substantial. Unless you don't believe that Iran today is essentially defenseless, I don't understand the point of your argument.

This is fantasyland alternative universe stuff. Having the capacity or capability to create a nuclear/chemical wasteland should not be confused with the viable strategic option to do so......every option you described above would result in Israel, on the day after, becoming a global pariah State. It would be a version of State suicide for Israel itself to engage in any of the above options, therefore they aren't actually options at all. I mean think about it - It would be breaking the nuclear taboo, the chemical weapons taboo or your last option (Iran oil destruction/starvation) would plunge the world into a global depression by destroying Iran's oil infrastructure (which as Epic Fury has shown is the functional equivalent of saying your going to destroy the entirety of the Gulf's energy infrastructure guaranteeing a global depression). Stripped of apocalyptic fantasy, Israel's actual strategic options for overthrowing the regime in Iran boil down to a conventional conflict......and that is a conflict they structurally lack the capability to win on their own.

I think you can even take realized gains on the bond portfolio, which is not part of the 5% return from the fixed income portfolio that Fairfax has quoted. From p.66 in the 2025 AR: (8) The effective interest rate is the rate that discounts estimated future cash payments or receipts through the expected life of the fixed income investment to its gross carrying amount at initial recognition. The effective interest rate does not reflect changes in market interest rates that affect the fair value of the fixed income investment over time.

I have no idea what this means but the Oanda traders have been a good contrary indicator. Unfortunately it doesn't have historical data but right now the wrong-way retail traders are majorly long oil. https://www.oanda.com/bvi-en/lab-education/tools/sentiment/

He's a very persuasive guy, and HHH is now my #4 position, after Fairfax, Fairfax India and Interactive Brokers. I don't know if it's a very good plug for Joe-like companies, though. When he mentions the HHH housing business that he intends to build his Berkshire-like company on, it is in comparison with the 'crappy textile company' that Berkshire Hathway is based on. In other words, a cheap, market-hated company whose decline can be managed while building something valuable on top. I don't think Ackman is really saying that HHH is a crappy company but it does have good assets that can be used for building something else. I'm not sure JOE can say the same thing, unless an Ackman-wannabe takes it over and uses its cash flow to buy things with higher returns.

Sold 1/2 of my RBB position