bizaro86

In fairness to Prem, the insurance companies did have an outstanding year and the investments are almost all performing well. Security prices might not be, but the underlying companies (which is what Prem is referring to) largely are. All those answers about the rear view. I’m talking about the present, about what is written in the 2020 annual report. We had a bad year and Prem is not candid about it. That is why he didn’t convince me that the futur will be different. On what basis did we have a bad year? The stock market valued certain assets at certain levels as it always does. On that basis, maybe. But did the insurance subs have a bad year? Did any of the big investments have a bad year operationally (ie, in the way that matters?). You’re absolutely right about the short. But as one example, if you’d told me that Atlas would have sailed through the most aggressive recession in history the way it did, I’d have laughed at you. And I own it. Yet it did. Who cares whether the stock (and therefore Fairfax’s BV) reflects that yet? I really don’t mean to get at you. But I think Fairfax had a spectacular year, all told. It went into the first global financial pandemic in 100 years overlevered and with a raft of cyclical holdings. It came out with cash, rising book value, and an underlying CR of 93%. Works for me. I think reporting combined ratio ex-one time events is really disingenuous. Literally the reason why people buy insurance is to protect from one time events. If you exclude them, of course your CR is going to look great. Their investment performance is great if you exclude the mistakes too, but that's just not how it works.

Rolled my bubble put gains into Costco

So this basket of puts on crap has ~doubled in the last 48 hours. The best performer was the OTM ones on SPAK (which i sized the largest as I had identified it as my favorite) That took a 5% position to a 10% position, and being a chicken I've sold a bunch of them today to lock in profits, so its now more like a 2-3% position. This isn't advice, and I cost myself a great deal of money last spring by closing my puts way to soon. So I'm going to keep the last chunk (using the house money fallacy they're free!) and ride this out.

I would venture that the $19m per year has almost no marginal utility for Greg. Nor for Jain for that matter. It's relatively rare that people give up their compensation, even when it has little or no marginal utility for them. For WEB, taking a very low salary probably saved the firm enough on compensation for the employees (and especially subsidiary CEOs) that at his ownership share he comes out ahead. That won't be the case for the successor, and I'd expect the pay package to reflect that reality.

This This play, which he only held for 1 day, was a 5x and more importantly helped him build goodwill with the next generation of investors. These are the investors who will be buying his holding company when it goes public. It was a smart business move that communicated to retail investors "I'm on your side." Really? Even Chamath wasn't thinking that far ahead or communicating that. Either he'll disappear 10 years from now or he'll be huge. There's no middle ground here with him. We've seen these shows before...they go one way or the other. Cheers! He was probably thinking ahead to getting them to buy his next SPAC.

Yeah, Burry sold out during Q4, which isn't really a surprise, imo. Some discussion here: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4406847-assessing-michael-burrys-portfolio-changes-after-profitable-gamestop-trade

Were you able to buy all of those at $10 in the IPO? I think the risk reward is materially worse the further away from $10 you get.

8.6bb investment in Verizon. $4bb in Chevron. That doesn't seem like as good a use of capital as doing buybacks to me.

Has this worked for you in the past? My heuristic of buying a bunch when I'm absolutely terrified has worked great so far. I feel like crap for the duration of the downturn but I make a lot of money. That said, there hasn't been a decade long decline during my investing life. It just seems like not buying when there's a reason for the dip makes it likely that you'll miss all the dips. In that case, something like dollar cost averaging or remaining a specific % invested might be better.

I agree with this, but am curious how much skin the game a sponsor would typically have? Between d&o insurance, underwriting, listing fees would the sponsors typically be putting up say 5% of the amount raised? Be curious for any rule of thumb...

This This play, which he only held for 1 day, was a 5x and more importantly helped him build goodwill with the next generation of investors. These are the investors who will be buying his holding company when it goes public. It was a smart business move that communicated to retail investors "I'm on your side." Step 1: establish credibility with the marks

Totally agree! If everyone was left to their own devices, we would have utter chaos! I'll be 52 in July, and even after everything I've saved and invested, I wonder if it is still enough. I also know that the majority of people my age and those heading into retirement have a fraction of what I have saved. Without CPP, universal healthcare, medicare, etc., there is no way they would be able to live a retirement life with any dignity. Cheers! I admit upfront that know very little about the situation in Canada, but I have a neighbor who was was an executive at velcro in Canada (he's now retired), he worked in Canada most of his career and his wife is Canadian. He worked the last 10 years of his working life in the US though. He's in his late 70s now and said that he'd love to move back to Canada, but he could never afford to live there because of the taxes. He claims that his standard of living would have to decrease substantially if he went back there, so he remains in New Hampshire. This seems to contradict what you are saying. As a rule of thumb, wealthy people are better off in the US and middle class and lower are better off in Canada. So your retired executive neighbour probably would pay extra to live in Canada, and Parsad's comment that the average person benefits greatly from the social safety net can both be true. Every winter (it is currently -27C here) I consider moving to California. The breakeven point where the lower taxes cover the increased cost of healthcare (for a good plan for my specific family situation) is a bit over $150k US in income per year. For lower tax states the breakeven would be lower, but probably still $100k+.

Wasn't there some rule change awhile back that required him to be diversified? How come he is allowed to have that much JOE?

I also voted nothing.

Nice, what dates? I sold some Nov $4.50 and July $3 last week. And then some July $.50 for $.05 which I think is a steal. What are your thoughts on valuation? Unless it goes bankrupt I think those $.50 ones are easy money and a 10% return on notional in 6 months. I think your $0.50 will remain out of the money even if it does go bankrupt.

Not having to explain things to clients is the best thing about only managing your own money.

In Alberta we require gas to be conserved. So if you want to produce the oil you build a gathering line for the gas. Simple rule, good for the environment. It also improves the economics of future wells because the pipelines are already built at the front end.

Biggest SPAC ever.

They haven't been willing to take written message for months. Which makes sense, because I'm sure its faster for an agent to verify you then listen to your issue, then deal with it. Getting a question in writing from a pre verified source is probably slower...

+1 I hope if they don't sell they have a better answer than "we believe in the future of the company"

IBKR chairman on CNBC today: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/28/interactive-brokers-restricted-gamestop-trading-to-protect-the-market-says-chairman-peterffy.html He is very worried about a broker or clearinghouse failure. He doesn't mention which counter-party he is worried about, but RH says they are restricting long stock purchases due to CAPITAL requirements. This suggests RH is thinly capitalized. I know RH investors aren't sophisticated enough to understand this, but if I was sitting on $20M paper gains at RH, I'd be very worried about the viability of my broker. Disclosure: long IBKR Edit to add: When you say that IBKR should permit bear call spreads, you are saying that IBKR should accept the counter-party risk on both legs of that trade. The trade might be low-risk for you, but very high risk for IBKR. That is an angle I hadn't considered. Thanks! But my understanding was that the OCC clears every options trade. So IBKR's counterparty on my options trades is always the OCC. If the OCC went down that would be a systemic risk, and I think there is a 100% chance the US government would bail them out. And IBKR reducing GME volume probably doesn't make any difference to OCC's solvency. These aren't OTC derivatives with a specific counterparty like the Bear/Lehman issues.

Blackberry is U.S. listed and files a 10-K so can't imagine Canadian rules apply. Blackberry is also Canadian listed and files in Canada. So Canadian rules also apply. As with most situations, US law doesn't overrule the domestic law of other countries in those countries.

Like Buffett says, you are never forced to swing and can keep the bat on your shoulder all day. Sure, HF's and Banks suck in many ways, but you have the option to at try to not play their games. Ok, I'm not using options or margin but yet I can't buy some stocks with cash? That's what what bothers me personally. THAT is a way better complaint in my opinion. The attention that this is calling to the fact that there has been so little effort to assure suitability is potentially a problem for Robinhood and any other broker that is allowing 18 years with no source of income who don't can't define an option to engage in option trading. I'm guessing they are not excited about the potential this has to stir regulatory attention. Yeah, brokers shouldn't be allowing people to trade things that are dramatically unsuitable for them. But they should deal with that at the KYC stage, not by eliminating trading on specific securities. I have many years of experience successfully trading options. I'd like to write long dated bear call spreads on GME. Interactive Brokers has stopped letting me. I would suggest that isn't serving any actual purpose.

I dont believe anyone thinks the market makers should be forced to keep trading. I certainly don't. If they had pulled out of writing new GME calls a long time ago this never would have gotten so out of hand, because regular market participants would have charged much more given the risk. Those MM are sophisticated institutions and can own their decisions. I think the complaints are mostly about brokers restricting access. The stock and options aren't halted, and with current margin rules there is no risk to the brokers.

I agree it must be a regulator enforced ban. You could easily not lend margin on long GME options and only allow covered short options. That would make the risk to the brokerage zero. And they would still keep making money from the current frenetic trading environment.