Tommm50

Exactly. I fear they're still doing it. It seems just before every positive quarter announcement the share price edges down so the bump on the news becomes incremental vs eye catching. I promise to stop now.

It would be great if it's enacted. I can't help but believe the massive fleets of HF lawyers will endlessly appeal an obviously correct ruling. It's kinda depressing to note the Candian Stock Exchange is a hotbed of naked shorting. As Sanjeev can tell you, I've long felt that Fairfax's low multiple vs peers had more to do with short manipulation than "Mr. Market's" opinion. Long term holders recall Fairfax had the temerity to sue the hedge funds for manipulating their stock on the NYSE. Although it was 15 years ago it's hard to get off their black list once your on it. Enough of my conspiracy theory...

I agree with StubbleJumper. Having written business internationally myself I can say writing liability business (largely what Fairfax does) outside the U.S. is way more consistently profitable than in the U.S.. Americans are one of the most litiguous populations on the planet. Also, U.S. is a mature market with fierce competition and modest incremental growth. The economies of other countries around the world have an ability to grow at a much faster pace (although obviously smaller scale). India is the poster child. The opportunity to grow profitably in emerging markets is much more attractive as instead of achieving growth by taking an account from another insurer you have more insureds that are just starting and need insurance. This means Fairfax's geographic spread and presence in significant emerging markets is one of its greatest strengths and a huge strategic advantage. You should sleep well mon ami.

I hope our shareholders understand It's not that simple. I've been managing underwriting operations for over 30 years and you are a;ways walking on a razor's edge trying to balance growth and profitability. It's been said on this board that Fairfax is in a commodity business but that is not exactly true. Where that concept is most true is in U.S. personal lines and small commercial business, less so in reinsurance and specialty casualty business. Fairfax's portfolio is more tuned to the latter, as well as global and emerging markets. Crum & Forster went from a "main street" insurer (read commodity insurer) when Fairfax bought them to much more of a specialty casualty insurer now. Their results reflect this. In every case in the U.S. market even the largest insurer has a very small market share, you have very little leverage in obtaining your price and terms. You have better conditions in lines of coverage that fewer insurers write. Even here your opportunities are contingent on market conditions. In a hard market you have a better shot at getting your terms but if you are not very disciplined on managing your growth you'll find in a few years your combined ratios will climb as you wrote "middlin' opportunites" rather than the best opportunities. Your combined ratios will revert to 100 or worse.

Parsad, you know I have deep suspicions surrounding the hedge funds market manipulations. They have before and likely now have analysts in their pockets. This analysis of Fairfax is so far off it simply seems to be there to justify a short campaign.

I check the FRFHF stock price on the WSJ website. They also list the stock movement of 6 competitors (including Chubb and Berkley). All those competitors are negative today, from half a percent to almost two percent. Fairfax is up over four percent. Nice to see. I'm guessing it's the much greater impact for other insurers of "mark to market" losses on their bond portfolios.

This is an issue all major insurers who were doing business in the 60's and 70's are dealing with, these old "legacy issues". Asbestos is a great example. We are decades removed from when the insurance industry was blindsided by a tsunami of claims from the plaintiffs bar using the infamous "triple trigger" strategy. It's very hard to estimate how much is left of this to go. If FFH reserved it at $896M in 2015 and, as you say, paid out $1.2B over the last eight years you can clearly say they under-reserved it 2015. If their 2022 reserve is still over $800M you could argue they are currently over-reserved. It would be instructive to see what the annual payouts were. Were they annually declining, increasing, or relatively constant. In any event my guess is it's a trivial number in the grand scheme of things.

That's correct. The back end purchase of reinsurance does not alter the insurance company's obligation to the policy holder.

Nope, as long as the homeowner didn't start it.

I think we should send Brett Horn Viking's various posts. Maybe he would learn something...

I rate them a solid eight. I've been following them for 20 years and I worked for Fairfax back then. When they finally had to shut down TIG Specialty Prem made sure all stakeholders got out safe, including employees and especially reinsurers. That was extremely rare. I have absolutely no doubt of his integrity. They made a killing on the MBS debacle, they got killed on the huge deflation bet. I think they had the economics right, they badly underestimated what governments would do to prop up their economies. They have a lot of scars but they've learned and all their moves are finally paying off.

When do they announce 1st quarter?

Conspiracy theories surrounding old enemies start to percolate...

I think one of the drivers is Commercial Auto. It's a significant piece of the U.S. market and has been losing lots of money across the board. Even the specialists are struggling. Significant, across the board, price increases are happening, starting in 2018, increasing in 2019, and continuing today.

Thx.

Help me, I'm confused. I've been in the insurance business a long time and the uw results for the quarter were EXCELLENT as compared to last year and in general. Yet the market knocks the price DOWN 2%. Is it possible the market is so ignorant of the key drivers of an insurance group or am I missing something important?

If you haven't seen it. https://money.cnn.com/2018/09/28/technology/blackberry-earnings-john-chen/index.html

Ditto

Huge volume (relatively) at the open for FRFHF again, seems like something weird is going on.

Doesn't it count?

Having once worked in one of Fairfax's companies, meeting Prem, and seeing the quality way in which the company and people were handled I'm comfortable with Prem's integrity. To me the difference maker in the two stocks going forward is Fairfax's international holdings. The nascent operations in India and Southeast Asia have huge upside potential IMHO.

Regarding the Cohen dismissal, the headlines blare he wins a dismissal but the judge's ruling is "did not belong in that state's courts". There's nothing about the actual merits of the case. This seems a very curious result after 12 years. Something is quite rotten in New Jersey.

It's Thursday, conference call Friday. http://www.fairfax.ca/news/press-releases/press-release-details/2018/CORRECTING-and-REPLACING----Fairfax-Announces-Conference-Call/default.aspx

Yup, that's my point. That period happened to catch the catastrophes so the accident "year" in this case is and accident 4 momths. If it's annualized you add in "normal" losses and 8 months of premium the combined should come down significantly.

For Allied are we looking at (in effect) a year's worth of cat losses vs one quarter of premium?