barminov

Central. Born and raised in Kyiv, but I have relatives from Chernihiv to Cherkasy, pretty much all over that North Central region.

Realistically, the whole NATO thing regarding Ukraine is a Red Herring. Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia are NATO countries, take a look at how close to Moscow/St. Petersburg they are relative to Ukraine. Most of Russia's population already lives very close to a NATO country. What Putin/Russia fears is seeing a country that most Russians can identify with, succeed. Once Ukrainians got visa free travel to the EU, a lot of Russians said wtf? Imagine if things in Ukraine kept improving and what would happen if Russians 20 years from now saw their "little brother" doing better than they are.

You're absolutely right about the type of people that support Russia...it tends to be the older crowd. Partly nostalgia, partly some sort of yearning for the "greatness" of the Soviet Union. The Pro-Russian population is in the South and East of the country...think the Ukrainian version of the "Rust Belt." The thing is, before the annexation of Crimea and the DNR/LNR, there was a sizeable % of the population that supported Russia. Now, its around 10%, at best. The regions/areas that were extremely pro-Russian are no longer part of Ukraine. Regarding the vote in Crimea, it happened after the "little green men" (Russian regulars) took over the peninsula. No sane person will argue that in an honest vote, Crimea wouldn't choose Russia, but the numbers are skewed because your vote will be different when someone is holding an AK 2 meters behind you. 20% of the Crimean population are Tatars. You can read about what the Soviet authorities did to them, but there's no way they are voting to join Russia. I think in an honest vote around 70% would vote to join Russia.

Agree with you on oil and gas, and am positioned accordingly. Respectfully though, you have no idea what you're talking about with regards to Ukraine. I was born and raised there, have relatives, friends, business colleagues there, even now. When you claim that most Ukrainians are pro-Russian, can you give me a source? Mind you, a lot has changed since 2014, something current would be appropriate.

30,548,190 shares https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/915191/000110465921066266/xslForm13F_X01/a21-15594_3informationtable.xml The incorrect number is listed in the AR because of the RiverStone transaction. Also, the dividend is in US $.

NAIC filing for Q3. It's possible that they just re-upped/recast an already existing TRS and therefore, didn't technically "initiate" it at that time, but the fact remains that they did this during Q3.

Well, I guess they don't have to discuss anything but from very recent examples, Prem gave dollar amounts of gains from General Motors and Lumen which were both mainly from Total Return Swaps, but there is no mention of the loss on Tesla TRS which was much bigger. But Daphne's CDS example is the classic, big example of this. Did I miss something? is it a known fact that they've ever had any exposure to Tesla specifically? I thought it was just conjecture. The company has never mentioned it but their filings say that on September 11, 2020, they entered a TRS on an "Auto Munufaturing (sic) Co." at a strike price of 372.72 with a notional amount of $128.7m that would benefit from a decline. TSLA closed on September 11, 2020 at $372.72.

Well, I guess they don't have to discuss anything but from very recent examples, Prem gave dollar amounts of gains from General Motors and Lumen which were both mainly from Total Return Swaps, but there is no mention of the loss on Tesla TRS which was much bigger. But Daphne's CDS example is the classic, big example of this.

What's the policy? They discuss plenty of their investments why not these?

Maybe they did an inverse total return swap on BB. Would be really easy for them to do since they can lend their own stock to the counterparty. We probably just need to see the Q1 report in less than two months and you might have your answer. How big a number in investment gains in Q1 will make you happy even if you don't know BB gains are part of it? Do you have an estimate with BB marked to market? Some of the big names have moved up a lot so far in 2021. I am just speculating of course. FFH did a long total return swap on its own stock and didn't have to file anything on SEDI. It would follow, it's the same if they entered into an inverse total return swap on BB. Why would he ever say anything if that's the case? Better to be the supportive long term shareholder for BB's sake which is of course in our best interest too. To me the BB issue is about a lot more than whether or not the investment gain was realized in Q1 and the size of the gain. Generally speaking, I'm a very long term investor. Whether or not they realized this gain doesn't change the long term value of the shares all that much. What it does change radically though, is my assessment of FFH's management, their disclosures to shareholders, and the suitability of the company to be a long term holding in my portfolio. With their actions over the last 5-10 years, they've lost their place as a long term holding in my portfolio. If they've done nothing with BB and refuse to acknowledge it/talk about it, that just reinforces my belief that FFH is not a suitable long term holding. Like I said earlier, there could have been reasons why they couldn't do anything or didn't want to do anything, but as a shareholder I'd expect to hear about those. "John Chen is great and we like him" doesn't work for me. The TSLA short is in exactly the same bucket. The lack of discussion/disclosure, and continuing to do something they said they wouldn't is a much bigger issue to me than the actual loss. Could they have realized the BB gain through a TR swap? Sure and maybe they did but what's the benefit of not disclosing this to shareholders? So John Chen doesn't find out? They could have easily told him: "We have no plans to sell BB but we're going to take advantage of the temporary price move with a TRS. Keep doing what you're doing, we're not going anywhere." I thought this was exactly what was happening when BB issued the press release that said we're not aware of anything happening to cause the share price movement. That gave insiders the all-clear but so far, it looks like nothing happened on that front. EDIT: Just to be clear, I do see all the positives (huge improvements in the insurance subs, the gains in a lot of their holdings, etc) and I am currently a shareholder but because of these issues and several other things over the last 5-10 years, I'm along for the ride temporarily, not a long term partner.

As a long time follower, and at times shareholder, of Fairfax, that letter was very disappointing. After the last conference call, it should have been pretty obvious to everyone at the company that shareholders want to know what, if anything, was done with BlackBerry. Prem side-stepped this and gave his usual: John Chen is great and we like him. Cool, but everyone that's followed the company for longer than a quarter already knew that. Shareholders are more interested in why several members of the investment team (including Wade Burton who he later praised for doing a great job) sold shares of BB during the run-up and FFH seemingly did nothing. If there's some reason they couldn't/didn't want to, say so but don't just avoid the subject altogether. Even a simple: "we can't talk about it" would have been better. Second, there was no discussion at all about their Tesla short. From the 2018 letter: "After much thought and discussion, it became clear to me that shorting is dangerous, very short term in nature and anathema to long term value investing. As I mentioned to you in last year’s annual report, shorting has cost us, cumulatively, net of our gains on common stock, approximately $2 billion! This will not be repeated! In the future, we may use options with a potential finite loss to hedge our equity exposure, but we will never again indulge anew in shorting with uncapped exposure. Your Chairman continues to learn – slowly!!" Yet they decided to not close out the Tesla short total return swap and kept extending it. On the conference calls, they made it sound like they were working through it, winding it down and there was just a little more left. This is deceptive at best. It's a short total return swap with Bank of America as a counterparty. I'm not a derivatives trader so I might be wrong here but I'm pretty sure you just pick up the phone and close the trade, maybe pay somewhat of a premium to get out. Instead, as late as September 11, 2020, they re-upped it for a notional amount of $128.7m at a strike price of $372.72. That sure doesn't jive with the statement made in the 2018 letter. At some point in 2020 they finally closed it out and yet the current letter basically just says "hey, we closed a short after losing a bunch of money." Maybe after a huge loss like that some discussion is warranted? Hell, I agree with them and this position but their timing was off and they got burned. If they explained the logic/thinking behind why they did it (it's crazy overvalued), explained what happened (the price kept going up with no rhyme or reason), and said "we learned once again why shorting without limiting your downside is dumb, we won't do it again" it would have been a lot better than the way they did handle it which was essentially an insult to everyone's intelligence and/or a hope that no one is paying attention. Third, and by far the least important, it's Ukraine not "the Ukraine." This is mainly just a pet peeve of mine but "the Ukraine" is what Russians called it when it was one of the Soviet Republics because it was a region in a larger country (like the Great Plains, the Northeast, the Rockies etc). 99.9% of people don't/won't and shouldn't care but the people that might are the people in the Ukrainian subsidiaries that Prem is trying to praise. Interestingly enough, he got it right in the first part of the letter and switched to "the Ukraine" in the latter part. Anyway, at least he got Colombia right.

Slight correction: they sold 20% of the mezzanine and 50.1% of the junior to the servicer (see: https://www.eurobankholdings.gr/en/grafeio-tupou/etairiki-anakoinosi-24-07-20). So, Cairo Mezz retained 75% of the mezz and 44.9% of the junior (the other 5% of each are at Eurobank). The notional amounts of Cairo senior, mezzanine and junior notes are as follows: €2.4 billion, €1.5 billion and €3.6 billion respectively. Using those numbers, Cairo Mezz has €1.125b of mezz at notional value and €1.62b of juniors at notional value. The press release (https://www.eurobankholdings.gr/en/grafeio-tupou/etairiki-anakoinosi-05-06-20/) that announced the deal with the servicer said: - 20% of the mezzanine notes and the minimum required percentage of the junior notes are sold to doValue for a consideration in cash. The implied valuation based on the nominal value of the senior notes and the sale price of the mezzanine and junior notes corresponds to 33.3% of the total gross value of the securitized portfolio. If I'm understanding this correctly, they got paid cash of €97.5m for 20% of the mezz and 50.1% of the juniors. (Edit: I wasn't understanding it correctly because Eurobank got paid €14m for them according to the Q3 report). The remaining 75% of the mezz and 44.9% of the junior, with a combined notional of €2.75b, are currently trading at around €30m.

Oh yeah, there's no doubt it makes sense in some scenarios. Keep in mind though you're talking about the highest tier in the state which has the 6th highest average rate of electricity in the country (Source: http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a ). The average rate for CA is around 17 cents. I'm in Los Angeles and our highest tier during the most expensive season is 21.5 cents. Even so, I was doing some back of the envelope calculations for a household in my area and installing solar would yield mid-teen returns (after federal and state incentives). I was just pointing out to yadayada that in his back of the envelope calculation for the power consumption of the entire United States, using 37 cents per kWh isn't appropriate. I'm wondering if one were to sign a Power Purchase Agreement with Solar City, what kind of rates they would charge. Hypothetically, if someone was with Southern California Edison (Tier 1 - 13 cents, Tier 2 - 16 cents, Tier 3 - 27 cents, Tier 4 - 31 cents), and Solar City quoted a PPA for 20 cents a kWh, you would only get a system big enough to get you down to Tier 2 and no more. Has anyone received a quote? From their annual report I see that cost of installation is about $3/Watt so a 1KW system would cost them roughly $3000. This should generate between 1400-2000 kWh in California (more in SoCal, less in NorCal). Say 1700 kWh on average. If they sell this to the customer at 17 cents a kWh (average for CA), they get revenue of about $290/year. Federal and State incentives would bring the cost down (I have no idea what kind of incentives they receive) and maintenance would eat into some of that. Anyway, the stock looks absurdly overpriced but I'm off to do more reading since the industry is interesting and I'm realizing I don't know enough to even ballpark what they/any other company in the industry could potentially make. I would say a 19% efficiency is lowballing it? Can probably do almost double? 40% range is doable but that would be near the current world record (44.7%) and these are extremely expensive. They're not used for residential or commercial applications. These are in the concentrator triple-junction category of cells and are used in space applications (think NASA). Most residential solar panels (without concentrators) are in the 20% range.

Oh yeah, there's no doubt it makes sense in some scenarios. Keep in mind though you're talking about the highest tier in the state which has the 6th highest average rate of electricity in the country (Source: http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a ). The average rate for CA is around 17 cents. I'm in Los Angeles and our highest tier during the most expensive season is 21.5 cents. Even so, I was doing some back of the envelope calculations for a household in my area and installing solar would yield mid-teen returns (after federal and state incentives). I was just pointing out to yadayada that in his back of the envelope calculation for the power consumption of the entire United States, using 37 cents per kWh isn't appropriate. I'm wondering if one were to sign a Power Purchase Agreement with Solar City, what kind of rates they would charge. Hypothetically, if someone was with Southern California Edison (Tier 1 - 13 cents, Tier 2 - 16 cents, Tier 3 - 27 cents, Tier 4 - 31 cents), and Solar City quoted a PPA for 20 cents a kWh, you would only get a system big enough to get you down to Tier 2 and no more. Has anyone received a quote? From their annual report I see that cost of installation is about $3/Watt so a 1KW system would cost them roughly $3000. This should generate between 1400-2000 kWh in California (more in SoCal, less in NorCal). Say 1700 kWh on average. If they sell this to the customer at 17 cents a kWh (average for CA), they get revenue of about $290/year. Federal and State incentives would bring the cost down (I have no idea what kind of incentives they receive) and maintenance would eat into some of that. Anyway, the stock looks absurdly overpriced but I'm off to do more reading since the industry is interesting and I'm realizing I don't know enough to even ballpark what they/any other company in the industry could potentially make.

37 cents/kWh? The national average is closer to 12 cents/kwh. I think only Hawaii and Alaska are anywhere near 37. Edit: Alaska is around 20 cents/kwh .