mranski

Does anyone have an opinion they will share on Tims. Okay, i'll give you mine, anyway. Great canadian operations, franchising, products and marketing Good return on investment and decent moat Overpriced at $30, worth buying at $25 considering slower growth Wasting shareholder money in the us expansion Co-branding with Stone Cold Creamery a mistake

Don't buy at 20PE because you might get it closer to 10 someday.

Td is quite good overall. Like most brokers, the real fees are made in foreign exchange if you buy foreign equities in your rrsp, which is where you should be buying them. One purchase i did, i estimate the spread was $600, so the 9.99 is not what i'm worried about. They let you wash trade us money to us money, so that is some relief. Also, you can swap in equities from account to account which helps.

Drawing alot of blanks. Nothing screaming at me.

If it trades at xbook now, it may trade at that for a long time. probably have to accept book increase % as your total long term return, which is decent, but not a home run. If it trades at book or above, could be excellent. If it sells, could be excellent.

thanks for the information. There is another broker advertising in the Post http://www.virtualbrokers.com/ I'd like the bank brokerages to get the software resolved. They do it for the non reg account so it can't be that difficult. The money in fx trades must be the real reason.

TD told me 2 years ago they were working on it. They never said it was CRA rules. Last time they said it was complicated and maybe not feasible. But you are talking to front line representatives who may not know. I don't know the answer. I suspect it is the RRSP reporting to CRA issues for the brokerage that is the roadblock, but not the CRA themselves. The foreign content limit abolishment, and the resulting usefulness from a tax viewpoint, of putting foreign dividend payers in an RRSP, make the automatic conversion of dividends to cdn dollars very punitive. Buying or selling a large initial position with currency exchange spreads is very expensive, and it is hard to pinpoint the real cost. From my calculations, it is huge. It dwarfs the trade fee issue. You can wash trades , but it is inconvenient, a phone call, not the answer long term.

They should have a US$ only RRSP account, and a Cdn$ account, just like with non RRSP accounts. It is unclear to me that it is CRA rules that prevent this.

Anyone know why major discount brokerages (bank) don't offer this?

Is this the brother of the former ambassador who has been accused by some of improperly negotiating for himself siginificant iraqi oil lease interest. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/world/middleeast/12galbraith.html

if you look at this on an earnings basis, it seems extremely cheap, or am i missing something.

It looks like Sanford Berstein was replaced recently

I like the Jackman aspect. I believe S Jarislowsky runs the United Corp Portfolio which is good. I haven't looked at numbers but i would say closer to $600 for book.

Anyone have an opinion on this company as an alternative or in addition to Fairfax.

i'd buy one of the cdn banks although not at these prices. bns, ry, or td.

This is a double WEB no no. A business with bad economics combined bad management.

In hindsight, i was quite disappointed at the picks of Irwin Michael of ABC, and his results and feel he was a bit like Miller, overrated in the bull market. I didn't expect anyone to foresee the meltdown, especially to the extent it happened, but you need extreme due diligence and conservative purchases with margin of safety and I don't think he has done that. These managers seem more interested in buying something that might fly, than preserving capital.

You might want to read Buffett's comments on PE firms in the annual report. I think it says quite alot and is very well said.

thanks

I always held Irwin Michael in high regard, and in the same class of stockpicker as Francis Chou. However, I must confess, that after seeing the recent results for ABC funds, i'm starting to doubt his ability to outperform. I know alot of the carnage is general market crash that he cannot control, and it is easy to criticize in hindsight through the rear view mirror. However, what bothers me is some of the individual picks such as GM and Lakeview Reit and some others?

Stella Jones SJ-T Consolidator in the treated wood production and wholesale. Cost conscious management. Good balance sheet. Growth. Infrastructure play. Main concern would be commodity cyclical nature of business and pricing power .

My comments were meant to exclude any profitability from investing or one time credit bets. I don't know whether your profitability graphs include that or not, but if so, that is not what I was trying to point out in response to potential reasons to sell the position. I don't think that Federated, Lombard, or Commonwealth insurance and their products and services and underwriting discipline are competitively advantaged in the Cdn marketplace. They are decent companies but there are umpteen other competing entities in their marketplace.

I would add 8) FFH insurance companies as operating underwriting entities are generally also-rans in the industry if you break out the investing jockey. Unlike Geico and General Re which are competitively advantaged.