LC

Figured I'd post this here versus a DR Horton thread

No it is not - frankly I am just estimating a BV (1000-1050 USD) at end of quarter. On earnings: need to have a sense of where earnings will go from here. Where growth will come from, where (perhaps) there will be some hit to earnings. I am certainly no expert like Viking - but I just think it was easier buying in the 4-5-6-700s looking out to 2022-23-24, than in the 1200s looking out into 2025-26-27.

My stance is similar to @MMM20 Fairfax has been on a 2-3 year tear, and trades at 1.2-1.3x BV. Could it go to 1.5x, 1.7x, 2x book? Sure - and probably deservedly. But to push back: Do we also think many of the easy hurdles have already been cleared?

Sold OOM calls on Citi Sold OOM puts on St. Joe Sold out of OWL (thank you, RedLion - I really enjoy reading your posts/insights on the alt managers)

Today kind of illustrates what I (poorly) was trying to communicate here. Something like Berkshire- management (Buffett) does a good job of providing consistency. Dependable businesses and cashflows, and he buys back stock when below IV. Clipper- shortly put, there is a lot of instability. Management sort of turns a blind eye to it. For a company like Berkshire I might be buying back some of the shares I sold in the $7 range. But Clipper I will wait to see if this sinks back into the $5/sh range. Bit of a trading sardine despite NYC real estate assets.

Mainly a trading decision - I see value in CLPR assets but the stock does not trade very well and I don't think management works to maximize the share price. I'd rather reduce exposure and take what the market gives me. Probably it shoots back up to 8/9, but this is finally a sub 3% position for me and I am a lot more comfortable with that. Opportunity cost over the past 2 years sucks, unfortunately.

sold a little more CLPR. took about 20% off the position in the past few days ranging from 6.70-7.05 or so

Innovation and industry are two different things and take different skills to succeed. The term I would use is industrialist. Elon Musk is a great industrialist. But his success is not due to innovation or genius - I would say circumstance and his own cunning play a larger role. I mean - removing middle management? Providing strong leadership to an organization? This is not innovation, but it is certainly very difficult to succeed in doing (look to Citi for how difficult it is). My only point is that labelling Musk brilliant or genius I think is off-base. Strong willed? Cunning? Ruthless? Absolutely. Coincidentally these are skills he has in common with Trump - not shocking they are in bed together.

The majority of progress is a brutal push forward from thousands of people who I would gather most on this forum would argue are overpaid, worthless degree, career academics, blah blah blah. Martin Eberhard was the brains behind Tesla and the EV market in general. And of course his work was on the backs of hundreds, thousands of scientists and engineers before him. Elon Musk is a great salesman and industrialist - he took a proved technology and market - and married the two (and edged out the true founders as well - how shrewd). A true cynic would say he was simply in the right place at the right time. The story of Gates and Microsoft has similar themes. Not that these people were not smart - but let's not pretend Elon went from tinkering around with a soldering iron to inventing lithium batteries. I guess my point is - it's easy to fall in love with personalities, less easy to attribute credit to the thousands of careers needed to develop and bring a revolutionary technology to market. People I think are real heroes? A good start are the scientists who discovered/invented human insulin, and then sold the patent for a dollar. Or Jonas Salk's famous "you cannot patent the sun".

I donate to: Cobalt: https://cobaltadvocates.org/ The Alexander Foundation: https://www.thealexanderfoundation.org/ and Colorado Parks & Wildlife: https://cpw.state.co.us/donate These are Colorado centric but I think they are great causes.

Best of luck, friend. I read your posts when you post in the Ideas section. I am rooting for you.

Talking my book here but Aecon recently bought into US utility repairs (Michigan/Detroit): https://www.aecon.com/press-room/news/2024/07/02/aecon-utilities-xtreme-powerline Their Utilities division does work in the US in terms of building out electrical distribution, broadband/telecom distribution, that type of stuff.

Agreed. I am impacted by the EU AI Act and let me tell you, I have never seen a more poorly devised, poorly written, and ultimately useless regulation in my career. It is such a waste of time even reading it, much less complying.

That’s awesome- I’ll order a copy. i found the early partnership letters are great - these case studies will be very useful for beginner/smaller/PA investors.

Agree with above. All should be disclosed. Will it? Unlikely.

Interesting to see the valuation differences between those companies. And Diamondback Energy - anyone familiar with this biz? Seems like the an oddball there.

Need to keep ego in check to play this game. Feel free to post this individual's market crushing moves

Yeah I've picked up a share here and there on slight dips. I've learned from CLPR though ultimately is the market which needs to be convinced - not me, not management, not the "enlightened few" true believers. So I am real strict with the position limits on stuff like this.

@rohitc99 I've always done it individually because it's usually just me + 1, and I like the flexibility. And it's always a bit of an adventure figuring out how to get from the airport, to the car rental, to an ATM, to the hotel, to here, to there, etc... I think if I were going with a family/bigger group, and less concerned with cost vs. ease of managing a bigger group...certainly easier to book everything together and have it simple and straightforward. Depends on how you like to travel. But really it's not too difficult to book flights and rent a car near the airport. From there you can drive to the hotel. I usually find an ATM in a not-sketchy area and take out some colons, but you could also just go straight to the hotel and ask them the best place to take out cash. Really though most places take credit card. Tamarindo is another area I like, and if you go into the high country in Guanacaste it's a mix of beautiful landscape and a bunch of wind turbines - very cool to see. Rincon volcano by liberia airport is a great area - have stayed a few days there and there's lot of nature-stuff to do, ziplines, waterfall hikes/swims, etc. Tons of resources online to build an itinerary - have fun

Not sure if you've booked already - but I love Nosara. Playa pelada there is Olga's a cool cafe/restaurant owned by like 8 french people, Playa guionnes has great fantastic surfing.

Sorry you didn't like it - I must've been in a mood I thought the pacing was good but in retrospect I can understand that criticism Glad you liked Slow horses. Gary Oldman is so good.

Hi Gary- best details for Aecon are in the dedicated thread in the Investment Ideas forum - but to try and summarize: Yes I am familiar with WSP & Stantec - Aecon is in a similar business, and was (and is) trading at a depressed price. Why depressed? They were engaged in a bunch of lump sum/fixed price projects entered into pre-COVID. During COVID they were subject to cost inflation, difficulty with managing employees, etc. They have been in/out of litigation to retrieve some relief (to middling success). But the important part: These LSTK projects (lump sum turnkey) generated cost overruns, which were weighing on the bottom line and clouding the profitability of the overall company. As these projects push to completion, those clouds get lifted - and the market sees true profitability. That is the main thesis. Other industry participants did not have this type of clouding of their P&L, and were already trading at higher valuations - hence the attraction to Aecon and not something like Stantec. Other tailwinds in the company's favor: -a high-quality concessions business, -decaying western infrastructure and political will to stimulate the 'real' economy via infrastructure spend, -renewed interest in nuclear builds (which Aecon has experience), -they're a national/industry darling, with a long history and deep connections to both Canada and Quebec (so you get some benefit of national/provincial protectionism), -industry moving away from LSTKs to progressive design contracts.

@Spekulatius Yeah it’s a good point - and I guess now that I think about it, it’s less about the absolutely performance but rather the lack of ability to size up/down the position. I wind up not having enough confidence to make these smaller positions bigger and really capture some gains, nor trim them if they don’t really perform (because they’re such a small %). I sort of let them linger. And it’s usually stuff that is at least a decent or good business, that I buy a bit on a big dip. Some examples: MSCI: bought at 472, it’s performed well but I never did enough work to build the position size. LW: similarly bought on the dip, it hasn’t performed, and so it’s just sitting there because it’s too small to really matter. In both cases I should probably either: 1) do the research to determine if it deserves a meaningful investment, or 2) just sell it and redeploy into something I know well. MSCI is a good example because it has performed about as well as Aecon, in the same period of time. But Aecon I know well, I follow the company, I can explain why it’s doing well (and why I think it will continue). MSCI I have a cursory understanding. Sure it looked cheap so I bought some. Is it still cheap? I dunno. Maybe? Maybe not? Is it one of those great businesses you can hold forever? Maybe? I guess? So then it’s the question of, what do I do with this tiny position?

Been a minute since I looked at my active portfolio: Fairfax: 36% Aecon: 14% JOE: 6% NTDOY: 4% FRPH: 3% MSGE: 3% CLPR: 2.5% Citi 2.5% STNE: 2.5% DFIN: 2% HSW: 1.5% BRK: 1% 35 tracker positions/weird stuff makes up about 9% And a basket of Japanese net nets is about 3.5% Cash 3% Probably I need to be more competitive with concentrating into stuff I like (either eliminating random small positions or making them bigger) and actively trimming stuff as it approaches fuller value (Citi in the high 60s for example). Otherwise it gets too burdensome to keep up with everything.

Yes but the "right price" is the difficult part here. Handicapping the possibility of windfall taxes, regressive policies (with potential far-reaching and long-term effects) is very difficult (at least to me). So it becomes a quick(er) "no" or "too hard" pile type of decision. Of course there are always going to be exceptions - but as a whole I am more comfortable investing in North America vs. Europe.