Parsad

Hi Folks, I don't want the investment boards and general discussion being cluttered with political posts and discussion, so I have set up a new "Politics" board where these discussions can continue. Unlike some, I believe that political discussion is important, but I also understand that many do not want to see continual infighting and members insulting one another. So, feel free to use the "Politics" board, but refrain from bad behavior. Thanks very much! Sanjeev

No, not a political post. Just that if there was one subject we could all get along with and agree upon, it would be this: http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/04/news/martin-shkreli-verdict/index.html The scales of justice got this one right! Cheers!

Yes, yes...no political discussions...that's why this is locked. But I thought of all of the interesting characters this administration had, this one was right out of central casting and would prove to be alot of fun. The ride has ended in a little more than a week! Cheers! http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/31/politics/anthony-scaramucci/index.html

What happened was that Mohnish first started Digital Disruptors...using a value investing framework to invest in technology stocks. Of course it didn't do well with tech valuations where they were, the bubble bursting, and the fact that the value framework is meant for distressed or mis-priced securities. He felt so bad with the losses his investors suffered, he asked if they would give him a second chance and he would make their money back. I believe only one investor did not partake, so Mohnish put in a little more of his own money in that partner's place. I don't know about any guarantees, but he did make it up to his partners and a lot more! Also, even in the Pabrai Funds, any partner that stayed with him, rather than pulling their money as the fund suffered on separate occasions, are back above water or better...yes, that may not mean much to some if they simply broke even after putting money in at certain peaks in the funds, but at least he didn't shut it down and walk away like most managers do...he hung in there and made it back without reaping any fees. Cheers!

Thanks KC! I'll forward your comments to Jim & Liz. The main purpose for goevisit.com is as a screening service and to treat non-emergency ailments...like your case or mine. It saves precious emergency room resources, reduces costs to the system and is far more convenient than clinics for the same treatment/service (non-emergency). Also, like your case, rural area...accessibility is enormous! And unlike other telemedicine services, goevisit.com works within the provincial/universal healthcare system, instead of charging resident users $49.95 or annual memberships. As technology improves and the services offered increase, the value proposition and convenience of goevisit.com will win out. Wait till we allow you to access your medical records remotely...it's coming and we'll be the first to offer it! My physician retired 5 years ago, after looking after my family for 50 years...I have no clue where my medical records are now! If you are travelling in Europe and get sick, you'll be able to pull up your entire medical history for the physicians looking after you over there in minutes. We're also bringing out a multitude of smart devices that can be rented or purchased and utilized through your smart phone and goevisit.com. Why use a holster monitor, when you can use wireless sensors linked to your smartphone to do the same thing. Manufacturers of these devices want to offer their products free through goevisit.com...Fitbit data in the cloud is uselss...goevisit.com will collate information for users. A ton of stuff being worked on...very exciting! Cheers!

His letters are about as public as you can make them. The SEC requires/required accredited funds to have a separate log-in to access information from advertising (newsletters, performance numbers, etc). If you are accredited and contact Pabrai Funds to access the letters, I'm pretty sure they would grant access. This rule was loosened up a couple of years ago, so I'm not sure why most funds still use the password protection. Cheers! Speaking of letters, will you ever be making the 2016 Corner Market Capital letter available? :) It will go up 6 months after partners received it...they got it in March...so around early September it will go up. Cheers!

His letters are about as public as you can make them. The SEC requires/required accredited funds to have a separate log-in to access information from advertising (newsletters, performance numbers, etc). If you are accredited and contact Pabrai Funds to access the letters, I'm pretty sure they would grant access. This rule was loosened up a couple of years ago, so I'm not sure why most funds still use the password protection. Cheers!

As I mentioned earlier, all the big value guys are sucking right now. Why single him out so hard? Also, he's not the same as the "helpers" Buffett is talking about--Buffett singles out 2/20 and fund of funds. Pabrai is 25% over 6%, just like Buffett was, and has not paid himself for years at a time. I sincerely hope you guys never screw up and have someone judge you as harshly as you are doing Pabrai right now... +1! As I mentioned in a post when Mohnish was hitting bottom and people were piling on him...this board, just like any other, is a reverse indicator of the future. Since that time, his funds are up around 100%. Yeah, he hasn't performed as well as he would like for his investors, but he's only human. Anyone who invested with him from day one is doing as well or better than the S&P500 TR to date, with PIF2 and PIF3 outperforming by about 4% annualized and PIF4 essentially breaking even. His interests are aligned with partners, he's had massive redemptions at the bottom on two occasions, and continues to fight and claw his way back up. Yeah, he's a cloner and his ideas may turn with what books he's reading, but he still uses the same fundamentals in analyzing the investments. His fund is volatile, but his results have actually been pretty good as a manager, and he only makes money when partners make money. Aren't there alot more (like 95%) managers more deserving of such scorn than Mohnish? How many young fund managers has he helped? How many investors has he helped by freely sharing his knowledge...and you know who you are...you don't invest with him, but love stealing his ideas and eating his hor d'oeurves! How many presentations and speeches has he done...like he's not busy enough? How many kids has he put through Dakshana into the IIT's? There's alot more to like about Pabrai, than not like, that's for sure! And who has the balls at his age to wear spandex when cycling (recurring joke by me)! Cheers!

Congratulations Keith! All the best!

Some companies do that already...license the software, etc. There is some competition in North America and in Canada in terms of telemedicine...including some fairly significant acquisitions. No one in Canada is offering 24/7 access across all provinces and territories, or remote access as snowbirds, travellers other than goevisit.com. The number of telemedicine visits is probably in the tens of thousands in Canada on an annual basis now. That number seems to be growing around 90-110% annually depending on data sources. No one in Canada is attempting to scale like goevisit.com on a national level. Cheers!

Different crowd that goes to the parks. Drive anywhere in downtown or even suburbs of Vancouver, and you will see more BMW's, Mercedes, Lexus, Range Rovers, Supercars on a per capita basis than anywhere outside of say Monaco, Hong Kong or Dubai. Immigration problem like most countries, but nothing like what you guys have on your southern border. Cheers!

To the experienced members on the board: I've only been following FFH since 2005'ish and have been confident in its long term prospects. Was not aware of the valuations prior to 2003. Why did FFH decrease 90% from 1999 to 2003??? Did it have to do with the shorting of the stock by a US hedge fund?? Was a $600/share "fair" value in 1999 or was it massively overvalued from a metrics point of view?? Do current investors need to be worried about a >50% correction in FFH stock price? One of the reasons I got into FFH was the fact that it is a diversified holding that should provide safety, combined with the fact that insurance float is attractive if you have folks who know how to invest $s. No, $600 was massively overvalued in 1999...about 4 times book! 2003 was a completely different matter...fair value was closer to $300 or so, and you had this massive attack by hedge funds and their cronies after problems with TIG/C&F became fully apparent. The company then...even 10 years later in 2013...is very different than the company you have today. The insurance businesses are as good as any other company in the world over all. The company has significant non-insurance investments, and those will grow. The stock is well below fair value today. While they didn't reap the benefits of their stock market investments due to their hedges the last few years, they are now in a somewhat enviable position of having significant dry powder when asset prices all over the world are not accounting for risk. The funny thing about Fairfax is that while the company has always preached a culture of defense first, you can see by their stock chart that they have an incredibly volatile stock price over the last 20 years. Some of it created by others, but some of it their own making. I don't think you go wrong at all with either stock...Markel or Fairfax long-term. On a pure valuation basis, and where Fairfax is now, I think Fairfax is cheaper and will do better over the next few years. Long-term, they are fraternal brothers that will always meet somewhere down the road! Cheers!

Hi bizaro, that is correct! They put the physicians/nurse practitioners on a fixed rate per hour or shift, which is significantly less than what the physicians are billing per hour in patient visits. The fixed costs are the hourly/shift salaries and the expense of operating the call centre. The idea is to break even or generate a slight profit on that as you scale up, but other revenue generation sources (pharmacy, medical records, insurance company fees, etc) pad the net margin. Cheers!

- Patient visits are billed to their respective provincial medical system through a billing code and the patient's care card number...no different than a patient visiting their physician in Canada...fee goes to goevisit, while physician/nurse practitioner is paid an hourly or shift rate. - Non-resident patients pay a $49.95 fee for use. - goevisit receives revenues through every prescription filled through their Canada online pharmacy - goevisit is signing up large insurance/administrative companies as the service reduces medical costs for these companies...they recently signed up essentially the majority of post-secondary institutions across Canada and a deal with the largest insurer of foreign exchange students...some of these agreements have annual fees paid to goevisit or add users to the system. - they are working on a number of other new initiatives that I can't talk about...some revenue generation-related...and a couple that would be completely game-changing! Cheers!

One of the companies Premier has funded is goevisit.com (https://goevisit.com). We own about 28% of the company, which is the only 24/7 telemedicine company in Canada servicing all territories and provinces. If you are a Canadian resident with a provincial health care card, you can use this service from anywhere in North America for free. Non-Canadian residents pay a $49.95 CDN fee for use. Prescriptions can be sent to the pharmacy closest to you or of your choice, as well as you can use goevisit's online pharmacy which will deliver your prescription to your door within 24 hours by Fedex. As my staff know, I caught a nasty cough and cold from my nephew and I’ve been out of the office on and off this week. So I thought I would relay my experience using the service: - Today is Canada Day…try getting an appointment at a clinic, your family doctor, Emergency or any online telemedicine competitor! - Logged in at 9:17am, entered Care Card #, issue and choice of contact (phone, Skype or Facetime)…done by 9:21am and entered online waiting room - Received call from physician/nurse practitioner at 9:40am…again on a weekend, stat holiday…really surprised by the speed! - Discussed what was happening via Facetime…went through a number of questions including symptoms, problems, medications, history, etc. - Because I have developed some wheezing/bronchitis and am traveling on Friday, was prescribed amoxicillin (antibiotic) and a renewed prescription for my inhaler - Explained to me that the antibiotics should take effect within 48 hours…if on Monday/Tuesday I’m not progressing, suggested I then go see a Clinic/my physician/Emergency, so that it does not become pneumonia. - Call ended by 9:50am with my prescriptions sent to the Shoppers Drug Mart closest to my house - Received a call at my house at 10:51am telling me that my prescriptions are ready for pick-up at Shoppers! I was thoroughly impressed! I personally had qualms about how good the speed of service would be at this point until we scale up...and that was even when I had read about all of the good feedback we were getting. But those were laid to rest...it was as good as I could imagine! Yeah, there are some things that telemedicine cannot do…yet...but as technology and innovation improve, more services will add to the desire to use telemedicine, not unlike any other daily service provided online. This saved me not only hours, but possibly days, since the clinics near my home would not be able to take me until at least Monday. My only other alternative would have been Emergency at Surrey Memorial: - how many hours wait would that have been? - how much cost to the system? - how inefficient? - how many more people (in particular weakened immune systems) would I have exposed in Emergency and added to cost to the system? - how uncomfortable when you are coughing up a lung and feel like crap! The convenience factor is huge for parents with children, especially those that have to also work full-time...snowbirds or Canadians travelling...cost savings for employers (one of my staff had two clinic visits this week during work hours)...people living in rural areas, etc. If you decide to use the service at some point, please provide feedback here and I'll be happy to pass it along to the CEO and operations team. Some of you met Liz, Jim & Clay in Toronto this year, but they have a lot more stuff planned for goevisit.com. Have a great Canada Day to my Canadian boardmembers and an early Happy 4th of July to my American boardmembers! Sanjeev

My friends Andrew Wilkinson and Chris Sparling, who founded www.metalab.co, put together this amazing animated video of Charlie Munger's speech on "The Psychology of Human Misjudgement". Enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-fe01CA3vc&feature=youtu.be Cheers!

I suspect the interest rates are the main reason. It's both...the number of shares that will need to be issued for Allied and the fed raising rates slightly. Funny thing is that Fairfax has over $10B cash in the portfolio which is sitting in 75% cash and bonds. It doesn't matter what Fairfax's price does as stocks fall or rates rise...they will be able to buy when everyone else is selling and looking for cash. As PI said, you are essentially buying Fairfax at nominally higher than book value now. Their insurance businesses are now world-class and fully profitable across the board. The number of non-insurance businesses has increased dramatically and by region. Like Berkshire, as they add better and better insurance and non-insurance businesses, intrinsic value will start to increase faster than book value due to GAAP and IFRS. It is already a business that should be valued at 1.5 times book based on the cash flow of the underlying businesses and return on the investments per share. The one area that I think they should remain cautious is their debt load. While still very manageable and staggered well, I hope they remain conscious and vigilant on this front. One of Berkshire's advantages is that they are beholden to none. I really would like Prem and Fairfax to follow that culture and model. Cheers! Would Watsa consider a share buyback? If FFH has >$10B in cash, is looking for opportunity to deploy and it's own stock is trading at a substantial discount to where Parsad says it should be trading at (1.5x BV), does it make sense to do a buyback/set a floor on the stock price? It is important not to confuse the FFH holdco cash with the operating subsidiary cash balances. FFH holdco doesn't have $10B cash. The cash is at the operating insurance subsidiary (ie. C&F, Northbridge, Odyssey Re, etc.) and those funds are part of the insurance reserves. It's not like FFH has that $10B of their reserves (future claims) to buyback their own stock for investment purposes. Holdco usually has about $1B which is what FFH basically considers as their minimum desired amt of Holdco cash set aside for financial emergencies/flexibility. So they basically have minimal liquidity that they want to readily part with unless they continue to lever up. More likely $20M here and $20M there, as they flow excess reserves from operating subs to holdco. In the past, they have said they generally leave excess funds at the operating subs so they can write additional premiums when the time is right (a hard market). What's to stop the subs from buying FFH's stock on the open market? As far as I can tell, the major subs are all overcapitalized and could buy holdco shares without drawing down their reserves excessively. Presumably the regulators have authorized far more dividend capacity for those subs than FFH has actually used? SJ They could. You have to be careful though. If in some circumstance, FFH's stock falls further (two large catastrophic events), then the ability to write business by those subs decreases substantially. Also, some credit agencies may have a problem in such an event where a sub holds a significant amount of FFH and losses are enormous. The simplest way for them to buy back a large amount of stock would be to issue $1-2B in notes and buy back shares. I don't think they would do it unless the stock was trading at 0.8 or less of book value. At that price, buying back their stock is much more attractive than much of what the market offers. Cheers!

I suspect the interest rates are the main reason. It's both...the number of shares that will need to be issued for Allied and the fed raising rates slightly. Funny thing is that Fairfax has over $10B cash in the portfolio which is sitting in 75% cash and bonds. It doesn't matter what Fairfax's price does as stocks fall or rates rise...they will be able to buy when everyone else is selling and looking for cash. As PI said, you are essentially buying Fairfax at nominally higher than book value now. Their insurance businesses are now world-class and fully profitable across the board. The number of non-insurance businesses has increased dramatically and by region. Like Berkshire, as they add better and better insurance and non-insurance businesses, intrinsic value will start to increase faster than book value due to GAAP and IFRS. It is already a business that should be valued at 1.5 times book based on the cash flow of the underlying businesses and return on the investments per share. The one area that I think they should remain cautious is their debt load. While still very manageable and staggered well, I hope they remain conscious and vigilant on this front. One of Berkshire's advantages is that they are beholden to none. I really would like Prem and Fairfax to follow that culture and model. Cheers!

Great addition if he joins! Will also liven up our dinner panel again. Cheers!

Read the deposition yourself...page 27 on. Cohodes admits to the existence of "naked short-selling". He also even admits that his partner Rocker was getting information he should not have been getting, and somehow Cohodes was completely unaware of it all. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/03/26/business/20120326Goldman-Documents.html?ref=business&_r=0 Patrick as unconventional and unpredictable as he is, is ultimately a nice person. He's put it behind him, because he was vindicated by Copper Partners $5M settlement. Doesn't mean he's forgotten everything he went through or what they tried to do him. And they tried to do this with Fairfax as well! Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me! Cheers!

Cohodes still seems like an ass! Cheers! Well Parsad, since you always say 'No man is a failure who has friends', and Cohodes has become friends with one of the people he attacked, and in general has a pretty good record of attacking real corporate villains, and not legitimate companies, his Fairfax mistake notwithstanding, who is it that seems like an ass for being so unforgiving? So a guy takes advantage of the system and tries to drive a number of companies into the ground using naked short-selling, and you're telling me I'm the one that seems like an ass? Patrick isn't friends with Cohodes...he feels sympathy for Cohodes. If Cohodes showed remarkable change, that might be something, but these guys don't change. You can hear it in his language in that article. He's still speaking with bravado and that there are those that should fear him. He's still blaming Rocker, but accepts some of the blame. This guy will still tread the line, or perhaps go over it, if he gets stuck on a crusade. He's done it before and will do it again. Cheers!

Cohodes still seems like an ass! Cheers!

Nope! Wasn't Prem. Good luck to Milos at Wimbledon! Cheers!

Was watching the French Open right now with Milos Raonic...was that Prem sitting behind Milos' father courtside? Tough five-setter for Milos...over 4 hours and 15 minutes. Cheers!

There is a ton that goes into real estate development. So much so, that we actually partnered with a team with tremendous experience in the area. Buying a property and selling it are the two easiest parts of real estate...all of the work that goes into licensing, regulations, etc, combined with being incredibly efficient in contracting, building and managing the service providers is essential in deciding what is a decent profit or a loss. Add in normal delays by municipal bureaucracy and contractors, and you end up reducing your projected returns on what is almost always a leveraged investment. But if you get it right, and you can survive the downcycles, it is the fastest way to creating substantial wealth. Cheers!