oldye

They have a lot of money sitting around earning next to nothing right now, there's plenty of upside to come when short term rates come off record lows.

He's not betting against the dollar he just understands that there will be more trade in the future if people want to live better. econ 101 stuff...

I've been using 16 billion dollars for earning power and a 1.6 multiple which gives you 25 billion in value creation per year or a 16% return at the current price. The Burlington deal will bring earning power to around 18 billion over the next 5 years.

The world mines about 3000 tons of gold a year and uses up about 300 tons while the rest is hoarded. At this rate the world has more than 300 years worth of gold in storage and that number grows by 9 years every year...Gold makes the housing bubble look like the internet bubble..its a zero coupon bond with no par value. Speculative bubbles last longer than anyone expects...but theres no reason it wont sell for less than the cost of production sometime in the future.

Anyone know anything new about the Fairfax lawsuit? It starting to look like the dominoes are starting to fall.

That was always one of the risks with the holding ORH vs Fairfax. I know you don't agree with it but if they offered shares instead of cash, it would of been perfectly fair. I didn't hear anyone claim that the Advent buy out was unethical...

Calling Buffett greedy in the interview and now insinuating that he'd act in any way that he thought wasn't solely in the best interest of his shareholders is very low. I don't know much about Schroeder; she must be awful desperate for money to go negative like this.

Berkshire will keep generating tons of cash and any successor will have to find ways to allocate that capital...you might want to read a little about the company before making ignorant comments.

Big boys become big by going to good universities where they butcher the hell out of finance so who is really to blame? BETA=Risk and Jeremy Siegel is not demented in the academic world...

Average Prices for NBSK was 693 and 730 in Northern Europe and America during the quarter. If current prices persist, Q4 numbers should look far more solid! From MD&A: Assuming full capacity, no market related downtime and the US exchange rate as at September 30, 2009, a change of US$10 per tonne in the price of NBSK pulp has, on an annualized basis, an impact of approximately CAN$3.9 million or $0.04 per Unit on SFK Pulp’s net (loss) earnings (based on 90,472,708 Units outstanding, and before giving effect to the conversion of the outstanding Debentures). If current price conditions persist for a full year the current unit price looks very reasonable.

Last years being 2008 ..not the 09 AGM where Warren stopped momentarily to say something to Prem as he was heading toward the stage. Warren Buffett also indirectly referred to Fairfax in the last annual letter when he said that "sophisticated" investors had purchased the Berkshire Munis. Fairfax was the most profitable insurance company in the world in 2008 so you can be sure Warren has been paying attention. It used to be that Fairfax was too small for a direct investment from Berkshire but you have to wonder why he hasn't made an investment. I can't quite remember who talked about the USG deal but it was probably Prem at the Fairfax AGM earlier this year.

At one of the Agm's someone asked about credit default swaps and Buffett used Fairfax as an example of how they're not all bad.

Fairfax brought the USG deal to Berkshire

Graham did buy half of Geico for 750k :o

What did these insurance companies do to India...thats harsh!

Yea Wells dividend alone should be up 7x sometime. 12x for a 15-20% grower is still a great deal!

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/francis/archive/2009/10/30/smartest-guy-in-the-room-on-markets.aspx Ironic title not withstanding, Cheers!

They got NB when the cad was around its low around 80 cents vs the dollar so they pretty much paid 1.1 book for the stake they didn't already own.

BV of 7.65 Billion vs 2.9 billion in 2006. You're right this quarter was nothing special, they've been knocking the leather off the ball since 06.

this is an oldie but goodie http://www.financialpost.com/scripts/story.html?id=9c0066a6-8473-4615-9b48-d47d4e1846b6&k=12662

Lots of value favorites up there like Lvlt, Pfe and Shld. Cool Site, Thanks!

The average insurance cycle lasts about 7 years so no doubt it can go longer than 7 years but a long soft market ain't bad at all for Fairfax...they have the flexibility to put capital to work in a wide variety of ways other than insurance.

A strong insurable event would lead to a hard market and lots and lots of profitable float which could quickly bring intrinsic value up by a 8-10 billion dollars. Thats why using BV as a wading wand for intrinsic value ain't the smartest thing in the world...but I understand why many chose to do it, anchoring. The gap between IV and BV will only increase when they start do more business.

It was at .67 at some point in 2006

China's middle class (40,000-100,000rmb) is expected to increase 6 fold in the next 15 years gdp of women world wide is going up by 50% in the next 5 at the current rate internet use world wide will be fully saturated in the next 10 years (think cell phones) You don't need to look oversea's for companies that will benefit from huge macro trends I'm gonna go out on a limb and project that women drink 50% more cokes 5 years from now and JnJ sells 50% more lapband surgeries :)