On that point, historically they would be correct. The insurance cycle is self-correcting to the extent that attractive profits have always attracted new capital which subsequently made the attractive profits disappear.
I will write once again what I wrote in January. If you give one of FFH's subs an extra $1 of capital, they can use it to write $2 of premium. That $2 of premium will earn 12-cents underwriting profit for the sub (Q2 CR=94). As we all know, the sub collects the premium long before it pays out an indemnity, so it gets float for a year of probably roughly $1 from writing those $2 of premium. The incremental $1 plus the original $1 of capital that you gave the sub can be invested today in a boring 12-month US treasury which closed Friday at 5.29%. So, in total, that incremental dollar of capital that you gave the Fairfax sub can earn about 22.58 cents of operating income.
The profitability is ridiculous. A 20%+ margin will eventually attract new capital to the industry. As it always does, new capital will eventually push down underwriting profitability. There's a reason why Prem expressed a degree of surprise during the conference call that this hard market has endured as long as it has, and that new capital does not seem to be flowing into the industry.
That being said, FFH has a few years of strong profits baked in. There will be at least 2 or 3 good years of profits, but understand that it will not continue forever. I see some truly enthusiastic valuation levels being proposed on this board for a company that sells a commodity product with few barriers to entry. There's still room for the price to run, but that will be mainly from the earnings that will be retained over the coming 2 or 3 years rather than some marked increase in fundamental valuation.
SJ