73 Reds

Western governments come and go. One can love or hate Israel's current leadership but at least the populace has an opportunity to effect change, as often as necessary. My (admittedly naive) hope many years ago was that perhaps technology and social media might effect a widespread change of thinking in the youth living in Gaza, the West Bank and other terrorist-run regions and countries. Not that it was, or is easily accessible but once the cat is out of the bag so to speak, the hope was they'd at least begin to understand what they are missing and ultimately find a way to choose a better path.

With whom among Hamas or any such organization would you establish such relations? In fact how can a Western thinking culture establish relations with people who elect - by force or otherwise - terrorists to lead and govern them?

Does anyone expect Hamas to act rationally? The question for everyone who criticizes Israel's objective of completely eliminating Hamas is, what would you propose?

Makes sense, particularly if you believe that growth is the objective. OTOH, may we conclude by the already proliferation of share buybacks that continued BV growth is perhaps more important and there could well be a cap - implicit or otherwise - on the growth of the company? In any event, even 12% BV growth for the next 15 years would hardly be a disappointing result.

But I wouldn't invest in gold either.

That is rather bizarre! If he's done selling he probably figures it won't be long before Berkshire owns as much or more of AAPL than before he began selling due to share buybacks.

For many people losses feel much worse than the enjoyment derived from gains. Its just human nature. Can't speak for others but I became a much better investor when I removed all the emotion from investing. This comes with experience, age, and likely an increase in net worth. When you sleep just as well after days your portfolio value loses six figures (or more) as when it gains that much, the emotional part of investing has been sufficiently removed.

The fact that shorts are permitted to operate provides opportune long investors a key advantage. I've never met or even heard of anyone who has been successful only short-selling. If they claim to be successful, ask them whether they would have done better using their skills for long investing. Strictly mathematically speaking, you won't find any 100 baggers, 10 baggers or even doubles after borrow costs. No thanks.

Take her to the nearest race track tonight.

Yeah, I dunno, if it were BRK my wife might have divorced me.

I put nearly 100% of my wife's rollover IRA in Fairfax stock in late 2021. Recently she asked me how I missed NVDA. Moral of the story: Try to please your wife in other ways.

If Buffett and perhaps Elon Musk and some other multinational giants backed a form of crypto-currency that just might be worthy of consideration. Still don't follow the idea of crypto with no backing whatsoever.

Yeah, the financial investment industry and the diet/weight loss industry share a lot in common. In both cases "experts" charge a lot of money to tell you what you have to do, while in order to be successful in both, all you really need is discipline.

Yep, it's amazing how carried away folks get about every reported piece of economic data. Personally, I've never paid attention to any of it and these data points have never affected an investment decision because in hindsight it's all just noise anyway. Even if one trades off these data points for short term swings, how much better do you do in the long run than someone who simply buys and holds great investments? In fact, I've never met a successful day-trade type individual, and even if they do make money, would they have been better off simply investing for the long run and devoting their time to something more productive?

I always liked your State slogan. And your State, of course.

Yes, I largely agree with everything you write. In fairness, I only started buying just after Covid but have been steadily buying shares over the last few years. In fact when the MW report came out I literally used all the idle cash in various accounts to buy only Fairfax shares because the thesis sounded ridiculous, even to a round-numbers, "big picture" investor like me (my baseline for buying stocks - like you - is that I don't have to be precisely right about anything to still do well). The difference between now and 2020 seems to be that earnings to a great extent are more predictable and predictably good.

Viking, thanks again for your incredible depth of research. Has the company really changed so much or have they simply learned from their mistakes? A company doesn't grow BV at a CAGR of 18%+ for over 35 years by accident. I loosely followed the company all throughout the 2010s and have the same questions now as I did then about some of the more public investment mistakes but now we recognize that management took ownership of their mistakes and moved on. It was their "taking ownership" part that convinced me to invest; still looks like the same company to me, albeit that much larger.

Yes, I would not even try to come up with a specific present value for a company like Fairfax. My approach is to look at current earnings, BV, etc.. and then derive a base case scenario of "X", while at the same time being certain that there will be plenty of gravy on top of the base case because Fairfax can and does invest in, well, anything. If the stock can be purchased at a price less than "X", it is worth considering. The gravy is derived from trust in management.

Perhaps a better way to value Fairfax is by a slightly discounted historical BV growth rate of 18%/year to account for the future growth in market value of the company. I often hear and read that discounted future cash flows are the way to value a company but have yet to find anyone who can hit the broad side of a barn strictly using this approach. Buffett is as good as it gets and even he sometimes misses the mark. The beauty of a company like Fairfax (at least to me) is that future cash flows are wholly unknown because they have a lot to do with earnings of yet-to-be-had ideas and acquisitions. This is why management/culture has a lot to do with the value of an equity investment and Fairfax rates pretty high in that regard even though such "value" cannot be quantified.

Well, the business may prefer growth over shrinkage and there ain't too may PE 7, PB 1.1 other businesses available (?)

Viking, always enjoy your posts - thanks. To me the issue is a simple one, provided you are a long term investor with available capital. Market driven price volatility is always welcome. However, if price volatility is company-specific, the phrase "know what you own" is all that matters.

I seem to recall studies that show how a value added tax could completely replace the income tax at rates that might be widely acceptable. I don't think too many folks of any socioeconomic class (other than the very poor who pay no income tax) would argue that our tax system is fair. By the same token, few would argue that the government is in any way efficient at allocating our tax dollars. Would anyone here invest in a for-profit enterprise run by the government?

Why would we want to dissuade charitable giving? As it is most folks do not earn enough or give away enough to avail themselves to an income tax deduction for charitable gifts. if anything, we ought to pay much closer attention to what actually qualifies as a 501c3 organization and whether the endeavors are in fact in furtherance of the public good.

It is this type of discussion that helps makes a market. What looks cheap and/or acceptable to some may look expensive and not remotely worth owning to others. Both views can often be right at the same time. All depends on your investment objectives, skill-set, risk tolerance and time horizon. Also depends on where else you can invest outside of stocks and financial assets. Personally, stocks and bonds will never comprise a majority of my net worth.

Depends on how much the broad market loses. The larger the loss, the better the odds BRK closes higher