Spekulatius

Yes, insurance linked securities (catastrophe bonds ) have been used by insurerers and even reinsurers to lay off risk. I do think it changes the dynamic of he insurance Markets, since they basically allows dumb money to get into the insurance market faster. I do think it is dumb money that mostly is buying these, because I cannot imaging thst institutions or investment entities buying those know as much about the risk than the sellers. I don’t think it will smooth out the market either, the dumb money will rush in based on need (to generate income) or perceived risk and smart insurers will sell those to lay of risk., but I am guessing that dumb money will also rush out and sell those securities as well , probably at an inopportune time. So, I think these new instrument will shorten the hard/soft insurance cycle duration, but probably not reduce their severity.

Tanger guided for flat NOI/AFFO for 2018, that is enough for me to conclude that the value is stable. Your opinion is the consensus and the reason i can buy at a discount. *EDIT* It is maybe not in the original "Graham" sense (Price to book) to buy REIT`s below NAV, but why not? Since real estate is at least as liquid as inventory and has a private market with a private market price i see no reason not to. With a large enough margin of safety this should work equally good. And if the company sells assets and buys its own stock it widens this margin further. NOI trends have been down and they had to keep their occupancy up by getting into a bunch of short term leases. This is not an indication of strength. If you look at liquidation value, I think KIM and SRG (which you also own, I think) are better plays and they also have better NOI trends. The outlet malls tenants compete price and choice and price sensitive customers tend to go more and more online for bargains. Their outlets are very heavily into clothing, which helps regarding to online competition, but also gets less wallet share over time. I think KIM and SRG have better opportunities to develop their existing retail for high returns nd trade equally cheap. I have decided to exit this sector except a LT microcap holding, because I believe these are mostly melting ice cube cases.

Bought CVE - the oil sand play. New CEO, FCF and deleveraging will unlock the value that the former management had thrown away.

In my opinion, most retail investors overestimate the quality of SKT assets. SKT has two very good shopping malls in Long Island, but also a lot of malls that are of B- and C grade quality. The average sales/sqft of $380 (which has been stagnant for a couple of years ) is the telltale sign.

I would rather have FFH deliver their balance sheet a bit and reduce of the preferred or debt at the holding company. There should not be a grand plan with respect to stock buybacks either, it should be done opportunistically. They should just communicate a value framework like BRK (multiple of book) and then purchase back stock when the criteria are met

+1 to everything stated above. It is important to remember that Watsa has been able to cement his control of FFH with only 7% of the shares. This is less than Wynn owned of his namesake company, yet Wynns board was able to boot him. Watsa’s control of FFH is disproportionate of his ownership and he should exert his powers wisely.

Ouch!. This thread went downhill really fast. :-\

The telltale sign of a companies culture is how well they retain the top employees. I think as long as these employees mentioned above stay on board, we can assume that the culture is intact. If they start to leave in droves, we can assume that something is afoot and we might be better of looking st selling. Apparently FFH has traits of a family run business for the better or the worse. I don’t see this as a reason to change my investment thesis, but it deserves to be monitored.

i have not done the math, but I am guessing thwt there is not enough rail capacity to move all the oil. besides, it is some what costly too to move the oil on rail, probably about $5-10/brl. I am wondering, could they build a pipeline to the east, I stead of he west. Sure the distance would be longer and the cost higher, but if that the only way it can be einem why not do it? Or would there be equal resistance to build a pipeline to the east? I think Richard is onto something when he states that BC has very little incentive to have a pipeline through their territory. If the E&P industry in Alberta has economic issues to move crude, its their problem, not BC’s. Maybe the solution is to give BC more economic incentive to let the pipeline through their territory?

It was worth a buy of a few more shares for me this Friday, but my exposure so far to FFH is small. I would not buy more, if my exposure were already fully sized or oversized.

I am guess that they passed on some premiums to a partners or reinsurances companies. This is mostly part of risk management to reduce exposure to certain (tail?) risks.

i didn’t now that Prem employed his failed hedge fund manager son at FFH. May be immaterial from an investment perspective for now, it certainly is not a sign of a transparent culture.

They need to generate consistent results for a few years to get rerated. There are quite a few insurers trading around book value and some have even decent results, and more consistent than FFH. That said, I am an opportunistic buyer of FFH, but I don’t think, it deserves to trade much higher than it does right now.

I agree with Cardboard here - I owned some AHL (purchased the recent downdraft) and decided to sell for a small loss. I added to ACS and FFH instead, which ai think have a better outlook. I sort of agree on FFH too, the results are too lumpy and just overall not good. Theüey should sell their crap investments and stuff like Blackberry and RFP and purchase something solid instead. Running an insurance company that has reasonable underwriting isn’t really as hard as they make it, IMO.

Article is BS. Their utility companies have some of the lowest rates and lowest increases in then ountry. Geico has the lowest rates in many states. I am insured with Geico in NY and couldn’t get a competitive quote within 15% of Geicos, even with homeowners discount thrown in by some competitors. It was aneifernde story in CA, but here on thrneast coast, it seems that Geico is hard to beat. In any case, their market share isn’t high enough to exert monopoly power, they growth through lower pricing, which is exactly what should happen in capitalism

US workforce? 20+ years of stagnating incomes coming to an end, maybe?

I think the recontracting risk quantified as a $100M annual reduction in port revenues, which I think means roughly $80M in loss of EBITDA/year. I had hoped, that the growth projects coming online would compensate for the contract expiration’s, but that is apparently not the case. i think there is likely upside dem this scenery as they recontract or repurpose the unused pipelines, but that remains to be seen. it is definitely worse than I hoped for because up this quarter, BWP‘s results were actually quite good.

I added some as well, but own enough already. it’s a but more of a Workouts situation that i hoped for, most of my other MLP buys have done much better. It is dirt cheap at an 18% DCF yield based on current prices. I think the thumbsuckers at L should take it out.

Having 75.6% of your investment in just two stocks seems like one hell of a concentration . I get nervous, once I exceed 10% in a single stock. Munger would be applauding Dynamic's Portfolio. How many companies do you have in your investment portfolio? I have roughly 30 stocks in my accounts. About 8 are small starter positions (~0.5%) that never got off the ground.

Time will tell, but I think you can put FB into the same fold. Really? Everything I've seen makes me think they are doing the exact opposite. What makes you think they manage for the long term when their initial customers (college students) have completely abandoned them? I am not sure about Vollege students abandoning the,, but ai think they have taken a Lt view monetizing pretties like Whatsup and I also found their desire to reduce fake news and improve the user experience even if it means less time spent encouraging. Again, time will tell...

Time will tell, but I think you can put FB into the same fold.

At some point, the number for the Cash iron Reserve will be higher, because BRK has grown and will be growing so much, that $20B will just be a Bit more than pocket change. $20B was the number that WEB mentioned during or immediately after the Great Recession, but now, BRK is almost 2x larger. So, a $30B number ad mentioned above is probably more realistic at this point.

Having 75.6% of your investment in just two stocks seems like one hell of a concentration . I get nervous, once I exceed 10% in a single stock.

Check how well Chanos funds have done. Well he has done OK for himself, but his customers sure don’t buy yachts from investing in his funds.

I always look at BRK compared to what else is offered by Mr. Market right now. Just a short while ago, you could buy RE, which is a very well managed insurer for book value (they don’t carry a lot of goodwill and intangibles either ). I do think that buying RE at book is better than buying BRK at 1.5-1.6x book. Just right now, you can buy AXS at ~0.93x book well, AXS isn’t the greatest insurer, but they are far from the bottom too and have a history of reserve releases, which means that their reserving is conservative. I think geht RE might compound just as well as BRK.