Spekulatius

Ok, my 2 cents as a transplant from Germany, then to California and now in Long Island (New York). The reaal estate taxes become less logical on every step of my journey. In Germany, RE taxes are so low that they are not worth fighting over. Probably about $200/year. in CA, taxes were about 1.25% of the value at the time of your purchase, adjusted for inflation. After the financial crisis, I was able to reduce my taxes simply by sending in a form letter with property value estimates that I got from refinancing my home. sInce property values had dropped momentarily below my purchase price, I was able to get it adjusted very simple. In Long Island, taxes vary significantly from town to town and even from property to property and no one can tell you exactly why.You can fight your taxes, but need to hire a specialized lawyer firm that takes half the tax savings for the first year as pay. It seems to work most of the time, but even after that, taxes are absurdly high at about 2.25-3% of your property value. The reason for this is as oddballstocks stated is that taxes are a patchwork of federal, state, county, city and township legislation which has been developed over the years and is incoherent.

I think ERP/Enterprise has various levels too, some more difficult stuff on the backend and how to handle data and the potential easier stuff in the front end, hopefully making the user experience better. I think the latter requires someone who puts himself into the shoes of an actual user and it appears to me (as a user of these systems, I don't know squat about programming) that those are lacking too. either that or companies don't want to pay up for the level of customization that is actually desired from a user perspective. It's probably a combination of both. I have some buddies from my research group at the university who went to work for SAP many moons ago and make a very good living doing so.

The way the Op stated his survey, it was geared towards those that made a high return to begin with, so it mswould t certainly skewed. There is nothing inherently better about choosing few stocks vs many, other than allowing for results deviating from the norm, both positive and negative. I suspect that if you had done a survey for those that achieved very negative results over the same timeframe, you would also have found many with concentrated investments as well, except those exhibited less skill and perhaps less luck as well.

Yes, your can definitely get excellent Chinese food in Flushing. Actually, you pretty much can get any kind of food in Queens. I have generally found that you need to go or be close to immigrant clusters to get good ethnic food for reasonable prices. This means you get Indian food in Hicksville, Vietnamese food San Jose, Koerean food in the Korean cluster in a midtown Manhattan, Thai food in Hollywood (Thaitown). WHenever there is a cluster of immigrants, the quality of the ethnic food they like goes up and the prices often go down - competition at work. This also seems to be a matter of supply chain, such that it's easier to get the ingredients readily and for a reasonable cost. Well at least in Long Island, you get very good Italian food pretty much anywhere.

I am guessing at most new members of this message board don't even own FFH. I don't own it and I know some other ones that joined that don't own it either. With no ownership in FFH, One is much less likely to attend an investor event that is related to FFH. I personally have never been to any investor event nor have I been to a shareholder meeting. I have been investing for over 30 years.

Re Chinese in Long Island I live in Long Island near the border of Suffolk and Nassau county and did not find the Chinese food very desirable. As I mentioned before, am a transplant from the Bay Area, CA and my wife is Chinese ethnically, but we both found the Chinese food quite terrible, especially the takeout variety. So far, we only tried it once. They solely cater to the "white" populace and only have standard fare like Kung Pao, Orange Chicken, egg roles etc. There are a few good restaurants in between, which I think are mostly recent opening from emigrants. Those are sit in restaurants which do takeout on the side and charge a little more. There is a cluster of decent places near Stony Brook catering to the large population of Asian Students there. I did find Indian restaurants to be much better than in CA generally, but for Chinese food, it is the opposite. I can attest to the long hours are willing to work and determination that Chinese emigrants have to get ahead and provide for their kids. Comparatively speaking, Vietnamese, Thai and Philippino's seem to be less successful. Compared to all these above, I grew up with a golden spoon emigrating from Europe with a very good education.

I.e. owner works 24 hours, their family works 24 hours, and/or hires (potentially illegal) immigrant workers who work 24 hours for below official wage salary. Which makes the operation the low cost operator. There might be more to it, but the huge-work-for-cheap is likely major component, no? I agree with above that the willingness to work long hours is the biggest factor. The whole family chips inhours, including the kids. Competing with paid employees is very hard and even paid employees are mostly less reliable and honest. This is not just true for restaurant or service business, but also for other business lie construction business where you can get incredible value from contractors, if you know how to deal with them. We had some work done in my old house when we were living in the Bay Area for about from Chinese contractors for about half what a regular contractor would charge, and the work was quite good (not the highest attention paid to detail, but pretty decent). However, we could do this, because my wife is Chinese and new the right contacts and how to deal with them in their own language.

He probably should abstain from managing other people's money, since he appears to be a gambler. He has a computer science degree and should do something more productive.

Political ill-will. Politics has nothing to do with good outcomes, logic, or solutions. It has everything to do with getting your way and/or making sure your opponent suffers. Self interest. The NWS is immensely profitable for the government right now, why give it up? Mnuchin works for the government now and Trump, who will need every penny he can get hold of for his projects? Why give away the goose who lays golden eggs now every 6 month? I would expect the governement trying to dump FNM/FRE when the housing market goes bad and these entities become liabilities for them. Who do you think would be the best suitors for Fannie and Freddie when the housing market goes bad and wants to dump them? So the gov will keep the money now and then try to find buyers for trillions of dollars of securities when the market turns down? Sounds like a great housing finance plan. I can tell you put a lot of thought into this. I am pretty sure they is how politicians think. They may dump FNM/FRE really cheap, if it is not wanted any more, but now, why let it go? You are correct however that I have not put a lot of thought into this.

Political ill-will. Politics has nothing to do with good outcomes, logic, or solutions. It has everything to do with getting your way and/or making sure your opponent suffers. Self interest. The NWS is immensely profitable for the government right now, why give it up? Mnuchin works for the government now and Trump, who will need every penny he can get hold of for his projects? Why give away the goose who lays golden eggs now every 6 month? I would expect the governement trying to dump FNM/FRE when the housing market goes bad and these entities become liabilities for them.

Yes Congress is a check on the President's actions...my sense is that Trump really shook up the republican party, and the republican congressmen don't know where their allegiances lie...so even if they did disagree with Trump, they are hesitant to really "check" him. But you're right: we're lucky enough to have a strong foundation with a gov't with checks and balances, unlike a blatant dictatorship or oligarchy. In terms of Obama's biases, my view is that, although the biases were there, Obama at least let his opponents have a seat at the table. Take the White House Correspondents Dinner (Trump just announced he will not attend). Obama attended and, admittedly, took blatant shots at his opponents, but he showed up and let them show up as well. Finally, in terms of the Press. To me it's pretty simple...regardless who is the President, we live in a democracy. He doesn't get to define what is "rational" enough to get aired. Freedom of the Press is pretty straightforward. Trump can argue that that the Press is unfair to him. The other side can rebut: Well if Trump thinks entire Press is out to get him, maybe it's because they have valid reasons. In some sense, it comes with the territory (as the saying goes, if you cant take the heat...) +1! Absolutely correct. I don't remember the Obama Administration taking any such stance with the press or even a single Republican with all of the crap that was spewing out about Obama's nationality or religion. Forget everything else...just this one simple issue was carried as a torch by Trump and Tea Party members for nearly the entire 8-year term of his presidency. Even Glenn Beck was one of those stating that Obama was a muslim, born in Kenya. Even now, there are millions of Trump supporters who believe this shit. Cheers! It has been said before, but we live in an age, where facts don't matter any more.

If you do not understand the distinction between those terms this is likely not the discussion for you. Good luck understanding financials in general without that distinction. +1. That distinction alone likely created many millionaires back in the day with GGP. Sometimes illiquid is the same than insolvent, as far as the outcome is concerned, sometimes it is not. In most cases, if you become illiquid, the debtors decide and if they want to own the assets, They can. this is particularly true for a financial institution where the regulators are protecting the depositors and to some extend the debt, rather than worrying about the equity sliver.

I think this is a possibility and I would argue that this is in the best interest of the government to do so. The question is not, what is right or wrong, the question is what can you get away with. I would even argue that starting with a clean slate is going to make it simpler to issue new equity after changing the statues of FNM and FRE. Doing so would certainly maximize the governments profit. The capital markets don't care, as long as FRE and FNM debt is safe. Wall Street will happily sell the new and improved FRE and FNM to institutional investors and the general public. it has been 9 years since FRE and FNM was put under the government wings, which might as well be forever. Companies reorganize and wipe out equity all the time. in fact Trump can be considered an expert in these things, so what is the big deal? I don't think I have a clue what is and when something is going happen, but I do agree that after the government change, a change in FRE and FNM status is much more likely - I am just not sure which of the many possibilities is going to actually occur going forward and if there is a profit or a wipeout or something in between.

how is trump going to find new shareholders to put up serious capital if the old shareholders are screwed? Same as with any other recapitalization or bankruptcy.

I am just wondering, why do folks here think that recapitalizing FNM or FRE means that existing shareholders or preferred shareholders will get anything? I am also not sure that Mnuchin get's to decide what is going to happen with FNM/FRE. He may just get the guidelines from Trump and if that is the case, and Trump want the best deal to pay for projects, well that could mean that the current shareholders get screwed over.

I moved my IRA from Scottrade to IB so I could get better access to international markets. Seems like a Fidelity thing. Yep. Interactive Brokers has no such issues.

So what prevents the government from just selling the warrants and getting cash for their stake rather than forfeiting them without compensation? That wouldn't prevent a recap of Fannie/Freddie, but just dilute the shareholders of common and preferred.

Moderation and truce has to start to start with each of us, before we are asking it from somebody else. The board members here by large should be reasonable, non-violent people, so it should not be hard to have a civil discourse. If not, these threads should be locked.

Watching politics now is like watching a Coen brothers movie: Everbody has a dumb plan, nothing works and at the end there are a lot of dead bodies.

This is interesting, why do you think this will be a great investment? Germany historically has had low ownership rates and stable prices. So number one there is a large rental market. 2. RE is quite cheap in German cities. 3. Due to the interest rate situation ownership rates and prices have started to tick up in recent years. I think situation will continue. 4. Cap rates are pretty good by themselves so you don't need a lot of price appreciation. 5. There are some reits that are trading around book. Also they don't take a chunk of money out for their private "administration company" which is nice. WExboy wrote a couple of blog posts on German real estate ideas https://wexboy.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/german-residential-property-an-update/ I bought Sedlmayr back a few years ago and had my Mom do the same. I recently sold as it doubled. I think the time to get inot German RE plays was couple of years ago, now commercial RE looks fairly priced and residential RE becomes overvalued. I actually think there are better opportunities in the US now. ( German transplant here, don't claim to be expert in either German nor US real estate.)

I am a very recent shareholder (5% position) and I just sold my shares today. Rarely ever had an investment left me as befuddled as Fairfax in such a short time after I bought.

Let us know what your are drinking or inhaling, I want to get some of the same stuff too.

I understand your rationale and I agree that this deal makes Fairfax a more difficult stock to hold. I just recently entered a position on the price weakness and intend to hold a bit. I also think the recent price weakness in Fairfax shares was due to Mr Market "knowing" something about this deal coming. This is a pretty large acquisition, meaning that a lot of investment bankers must have known about this, plus there was a debt offering that made no sense unless there was an acquisition being planned.

I don't think that owning real estate or a house outright is a rational capital allocation decision right now, with interest rates as low as they are right now, interest being tax deductible and the mortgage being non-recourse. The way I look at it, owning a house with a mortgage is safer than owning a house outright, because you can put the house back to the lender, if the price goes down a lot and you are protected against rising interest rates, which would probably depress real estate prices, but would depress the intrinsic value of the fixed rate mortgage loan even more. So while you could go underwater with a large mortgage on your house, your loan payment would stay the same, and if the rising interest rates are accompanied by higher inflation, your cash flow situs on would actually improve.