Marco Van Basten

Not if that insurance costs me $50K a year. Price transparency will force price reductions.

No, what they do is force people to buy insurance. I have surgery and I pay cash? Hospital charges $40K. I have surgery and I have insurance, insurance says no the bill has to be $10K, and insurance pays $8K and I pay $2k. @Cod Liver Oil, First thing that I would mandate is that every hospital publicly lists all of their prices for each and every service, and charges everyone the same price.

I am aware of Chubb's performance, including bond disaster in 2022. I think on the investment side most insurance companies are run by incompetent morons. Mr Watsa clearly is not one of them. It is my understanding that whether you look at 5, 10 or 15 years, Chubb's underwriting has been much better than Fairfax. The investment performance of Fairfax was much better than most of the other insurance companies over the last 5 or 10 or 15 years, I agree. However, the last 20 years saw declining interest rate environment, how will the results look if you have stable interest rates in the 5% range? Look I own Fairfax, it is a large position for me, but I am don't think that Mr Watsa walks on water. The TRS, which turned out to be brilliant in retrospect could have been very problematic in case of several large catastrophes in a row, coupled with a general market decline. Again, I am long the stock, and I admire Mr Watsa, however, we should remember that he has made some very big mistakes on the investing side (who hasn't?) and that again, my only point is that on the underwriting side, there are people better than Fairfax. Yes, Fairfax has an excellent insurance business on the underwriting side, but in my opinion, Chubb's underwriting has been better.

@Viking, I don't mean to criticize, but I would not say that Fairfax's management is best in class. Chubb for instance seems to have a better insurance business.

So, rumors according to whom? Iranian MPs made this claim. Looks like ourkid8 is working for the mullahs of Teheran..

It is my understanding based on reading newspapers, that India is happy to underwrite both engine and plane development in exchange for technology transfer. France of course would be stupid to do it, better to partner with Airbus, but...

What you forget is that very often, European corporate governance is abysmal. Witness the fight TCI had to do to prevent Safran from destroying tens of billions of shareholder value a few years ago on an insanely stupid acquisition, trying to pay twice the fair market value and using shares that were trading at probably half of the true market value.

I disagree, there is a price for everything. Look at the performance of Safran in the past several years, Holcim and Heidelberg Materials this year, Hermes over the past two decades, BTI in the past 24 months, Aena in the past decade and the list goes on. Richemont is another great example, so are LVMH/Dior, ASML. Rheinmetall and Saab in the past two years. Hell, I would even buy Russian or Chinese stocks, provided that they are priced like warrants - effectively a 10 bagger if there is no confiscation, just size them as you would warrants - very small.

Why do you debate him? He is a troll. Supposedly a Russian living in Germany, 90% of whose posts are political on an investment site. All he wants is to provoke someone and get him banned. Don't fall into his trap.

I think you made a mathematical mistake. 20% 5 year CAGS is 147% return, turning a $1 into $2.47. A 247% return turns a dollar in $3.47

Could you please share as to how you arrive at your valuation? Thank you.

Why not? If you assume that the average employee tenure is 20 years, then without firing anyone you can get there after 4 years, no?

New Chubb presentation out. One interesting tid-bit, expect to cut 20% of workforce over the next 3-4 years thanks to technology despite growing the business. Expect run-rate expense savings to = 150 basis points of combined ratio.

Linde's CEO bought USD 1MM worth of shares the other day.

Why CHD? Effectively no volume growth, and trading at 22x 2026 EPS. So what am I missing? Thank you.

Actually, not everyone, you perhaps, but not everyone. Janucz Korczak wasn't one for instance. You make a lot of assertions, such as people in the USSR believed in their superiority over the West. Well, guess what? I lived in the USSR and I don't recall people believing that we were superior to the West, despite the propaganda. In any case, what are you trying to prove here? I read your messages and I still don't understand what point you are trying to get across.

I guess Helmut never heard of Paivi Rassanen... Of course the good German does not seem to understand the irony in what he says: there is no censorship and everyone has to follow our rules.

Spek, where do you see PLTR's revenues and EBIT in 2035 and why? Thank you.

Actually it is not. Europe is indeed not doing well sadly, and you can hardly call the US the USSR. Europe indeed does not have freedom of speech, as this BBC article points out: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60111140. Europe is indeed being destroyed by welfare and immigration from countries with values diametrically opposed to values that once made Europe an incredible place.

We have to register at 18, I, and every male I knew in high school registered, not that anyone of us wanted to go to war.

With all due respect, Buffett has not exactly been a great stock picker over the past two or three decades, so I would not use him as a stamp of disapproval. What has Berkshire's equity portfolio compounded at in the last 5, 10, 15 and 20, and 25 years? There certainly have been many attractive businesses in Europe that did extremely well over time - Ryanair, Safran, Aena, Hermes, LVMH/Dior, ASML, Richemont, CRH, Belimo, Sartorius Stedim Biotech, are a few examples. He certainly missed a number of businesses in the US - Vulcan Materials, GE (in the last three years), Google/MSFT/META, Transdigm, Monster Energy, V/MA, Progressive/Fairfax, RSG/WM, WSO, and the list goes on.

You need to do better research. He has one daughter married to a Jew and another married to an Arab.

Because as the German chancellor stated, Israel is doing the dirty work for the rest of us. (Like killing Hezbollah chief of staff today who had a $5MM price on his head from the US government.) Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran are an existential threat to the West, Russia is not. (Yes, Putin is a horrible human being, and US and Europeans along with Ukrainian disaspora should have provided funds to hire a million trained mercenaries from Nepal, etc... to defeat him, but that is a separate issue.)

i agree that you can live a very good life in Europe, particularly if you are already wealthy. However, dress as a religious Jew and walk in poor neighborhoods of France, Germany, Belgium, UK and Netherlands and see what happens to you!

Former USSR, no, we had alternatives, US was not the only place to go. there were other countries. Millions of Russians fled Russia after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. As times change, you adjust. What was right for the US in the 1800s is not necessarily right today. Also immigration allows US to ignore major problems like horrendous public education system. You also do not take into account that immigration changes society. Would you like to live in India, China, Russia, Indonesia, Yemen, Pakistan, Columbia, Venezuela, Ukraine, Sudan, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Mali, etc...? If you allow major immigration from these countries, they will turn the US into the disaster these people left.