Parsad

And just to be curious, as I'm not aware of the answer, what was you full-time job back then Sanjeev, before the fund? When I started the message board, I was a supervisor for Loblaws! I quit that year and started working as a mutual fund and insurance dealer because I wanted to get into the financial industry after meeting Buffett. I had no idea how, and I quit university after my father died when I was 21, so that was my stepping stone into the business. But over the next few years I was really frustrated with the incestuous relationship between the dealers and brokers in the industry. They do a complete disservice to the investor! It wasn't until 2006 when I started the fund...the best thing I ever did. And it would never have happened if I didn't have lunch with Prem, who said just start the fund with whatever money you have saved and can raise...build a track record! But that lunch only occurred because we contacted Fairfax regarding the short attack in 2003, which we only noticed because a handful of us Fairfax shareholders had gathered on this board and were wondering what the hell was going on! Very funny how little things can make a big difference in someone's life and how interconnected they all are! ;D That first time I went to Fairfax's office was incredible! Francis and JoAnn just spent the whole day taking me around to everyone's office, and then I was allowed to sit with each person in their office and ask questions for about 20-30 minutes. You name them, I spent time with them that day...Fairfax executives, vice-presidents, Hamblin-Watsa principals and analysts. I also got to see their archive room, where they have an actual part-time librarian who catalogs and organizes all of the historical annual reports Prem has accumulated through the years...thousands and thousands! I saw the trading desk where Frances Burke constantly executes their trade orders directly from. In the middle of all that, I had a nearly two-hour lunch with Prem in the boardroom...Indian food! I barely ate anything because I was so busy asking him questions and listening to what he had to say. Every year, I would go visit the office and spend some time there. I remember one year I was supposed to meet Francis for a while, so JoAnn arranged for us to meet him in the smaller boardroom at Fairfax, since he had already left his vice-president position and was now solely at the Chou Funds. We sat there and talked for about four hours making little cappucinos from the automated coffee machine Fairfax has in their kitchen! ;D Francis, my friend Dr. Ajay Desai, our director Andrew Cooke (whose father JoAnn originally worked for before joining Fairfax), Alnesh and myself...four hours plus just sitting there and talking about investing! JoAnn would come in and check up on us every half hour and see if we needed anything. She was fantastic! That's why I do the dinner in her memory now, and why we raise money for "The Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of Canada". You've got me reminiscing. Anyway, so that's a bit of that. Cheers!

How much is he up already this year? Several of his positions have already risen 30%+ YTD, with AIG and MBIA holding him back in the two funds respectively. Berkowitz has wittled the fund down to incredibly concentrated positions. If he gets any traction on AIG and MBIA, it would be easy to see the funds rise 30% plus in 2012. Cheers!

You got it Petey! That's the whole poiint of this forum. Uccmal was a relatively smaller investor before he bought Fairfax when people were throwing it away. He could retire now if he wanted to. Ericopoly was a relatively smaller investor too before he bought Fairfax...he did retire after! ;D Now Eric is working on what he's going to leave his children with his recent investments going full throttle! Ten years ago, I wasn't running a fund. I started a message board with 9 of my friends so that we could just talk about Berkshire Hathaway...I didn't know Francis...I didn't know Prem...and I barely knew Mohnish...and I certainly didn't know all the wonderful people that have come and gone on here. The three stories above are just a smattering of what has happened to people on here over the years. There are so many similiar stories! That's why this forum remains open to people's opinions and we encourage everyone, from the small investor or large investor, to share your stories. It doesn't matter how big the bank account is or how much in assets you manage, it's what you have to say and where do you go from here! I don't know too many investors, professional or otherwise, that have done as well as Uccmal or Ericopoly in terms of return over the last 8-10 years...there are lessons there for everyone! Cheers!

I like Berkowitz, but I agree with that sentiment. He's in the situation he is in, because he was so heavy in financials. I think it will work out, but it should be learning moment for him as well. Cheers!

Good stuff! I think this is great for the company and its employees. Cheers!

This is not directed at Santayana, but I have had the desire to block or at least "prioritize" posts in some way. Anything where you could "follow" specific people, or threads were assigned stars (like yahoo finance), where you could quickly sift through what is a BS thread and what is not. In addition, I'd like to vote to add a "Macro" category. It seems like a lot of discussion under investment ideas or general discussion is related, I think this would help organize the board better. my 2 cents. Hi Watsa, I understand your sentiment, but I don't want a board where if someone doesn't like what someone else is saying, you just block them out completely so you don't have to listen to them. How un-American would that be! Do you know how often I wish I could just censor Newt Gingrich or Glenn Beck! ;D But that wouldn't be right would it. Having to listen to other people's opinions should only reinforce your own analysis and logic if it makes rational sense. When we tune out others, it's actually ourselves who we are limiting from the intellectual debate. Generally I have a chat with anyone who causes issues, and they are given fair warning before they are kicked off. I'm not averse to one poster having an exchange with another poster, as long as it is brief. The way me and my family work, and I consider this board and its members part of my online family, is that if you have something to say, you say it, and that usually clears the air. So I would suggest that the two posters (Santayana and Moore) focus on the post, rather than attack each other. You guys have gotten it out of your system...great done! Move on. You are both right in fact, but neither may want to admit it. Obviously most of you know I was pretty long in the last few months, and I don't think investors were being intellectually honest with what the actual economic numbers were showing. There was a recovery in the United States, and the numbers plainly showed it. At the same time, it is far too early to call it a full-blown, long-term recovery, as growth is very weak and housing remains completely stalled. I'm more concerned of a Depression in Europe than I've ever been, so all of us longs need to get off of our recent high-horses...things will remain choppy for some time. As someone else stated, this is a value board...who cares how we did in the last few months, or even in the last few years! Cheers!

Hi Finetrader, That's actually not how Buffett would do it. Generally, the deal would already have been announced and he would arbitrage between the deal offer price and the price the stock was trading at below the deal offer price. You're making a bet that the offer price is going to be more than $1.08...current market price. Whereas Buffett would be acquiring the stock below the previous announced deal price of roughly $1.00. If any proposed third-party deal falls through, Fibrek's stock will fall back down to the original offer price, and anyone who bought above that would have a loss. Frankly, I think the deal will get done around $1.15-1.20, so chances are, anyone buying will make some money, but I'm not comfortable with the risk of the deal falling through. Cheers!

The first ever "London Value Investor Conference" is to be held on April 19th, 2012 at the Hallam Conference Centre. All profits will be donated to "The SMA Trust". Our own "Mr. B" is helping to organize it! So far, 35% of tickets have been sold. The early bird ticket sale ends February 14th. Details are at: http://www.londonvalueinvestor.com/?dm_i=O75,OCIJ,5IS8ZA,1YRJB,1 Cheers!

Buffett will be on CBS' Person to Person on Wednesday. Cheers!

California back at the table and it looks like we could see a deal soon. Cheers! http://www.cnbc.com/id/46275718

Giants win, Giants win! Quants don't know how to measure intangibles. How do you put a number on the heart of a receiver, defensive lineman or quarterback? Another great game, and now you have to put Eli Manning in the discussion for greatest quarterback of this era. He's beaten Brady over and over, and took out the current MVP to get to the Superbowl. Cheers!

I bet. If I were running a fund, I would definitely have lockups. You must have fairly savvy partners to run your fund without lockups (I think I remember you saying that you don't have any lockups). Yes, most of our partners are very good. I'm also very good on the client contact, as we keep an open door policy, and they are welcome to contact me anytime. Often at times like we've seen, they just need someone to give them a little more perspective on what is happening, because there is just an enormous amount of noise to filter through. We run the fund fairly conservatively, because we don't have lockups. It's concentrated (8-12 ideas), but we try not to have large coordinated bets. We also operate with significant liquidity. Cheers!

Yachtman made contortions to explain himself at Consuelo Mack a couple of days ago: several small positions over several banks (even Bank of America, wow). That's after saying things like this before: “With a bank you create assets with a stroke of a pen. You’ve got a black box.” You have to give it to him. He seems straight in the camp of changing his mind when things change (or they become cheap). Just watched that interview. Yacktman's new position in banks is not necessarily inconsistent with his previous statement on banks. Most likely, he was questioning before why the US big banks and i-banks were such a high percentage of the portfolio of some investors (e.g., Bruce B), given his thoughts on the "black box" nature of the banks. Tons of people on this board feel the same way, although I disagree with them. Yacktman seems to be running his investment management business quite well. His portfolio is the type that will keep his AUM fairly sticky, I think. Which really brings to the forefront the issue with Fairholme. Bruce B appears to be crafting focused portfolios for total return only, without regards to whether his investors will get spooked and pull their money out. It appear it is in his blood to maximize return using a focused approach. He must stay the course. I like that, but I also recognize that most investors -- even sophisticated ones -- suffer from perverse psychology. It's funny, because most investors on this board want their fund managers to run their fund with little consideration for short-term volatility and to maximize long-term gain. Yet, when the manager actually follows that philosophy, the same investors are the first ones running for the lifeboats. That perverse psychology is what makes running a fund very, very difficult unless you have longer term lockups. I was fielding a couple calls last October, November from clients who thought we were going over the cliff. That Great Depression II was around the bend. They were pulling money from every manager they had money with. After a couple of hours on the phone, calming them and assuring them that we weren't, they felt a bit more at ease. Sadly, they said they would leave their capital with us, but pull from every other manager they had capital with. I explained that this wasn't a good idea. I can only imagine the calamity they have created around themselves. And these are "sophisticated" investors who have owned Berkshire, etc for years. When volatility strikes, it is just so difficult for people to control their emotions. Berkowitz was down 32%, but the fund assets have dropped 70%! Those same people are now paying the price on the way back up. I can only imagine how many of Mohnish's clients would have made the God-awful move of pulling their capital at the bottom when he was down 70%. Instead, many of them were saved from themselves by the lockup in place. Cheers!

Fantastic Forbes article on Wells. Cheers! http://www.forbes.com/sites/halahtouryalai/2012/01/25/wells-fargo-the-bank-that-works/

I agree 100%. But you'll probably get trashed by some on this board for saying it. They think that just because someone has done great for a while that they can never do wrong. They will sell a stock when Mr. Market pushes it stupidly high but when all that money came into Fairholme and Berkowitz decided he was going to try and be a Buffett or Lampert and it was weak money that was driving the price they would say you were stupid for selling Fairholme. He should have stuck with what he knows and what the long term investors originally bought into. No matter how great the St. Joe land development story might turn out, he should stick with what he had made his name doing. I think it was more of a matter of luck than anything else in making that decision. If things had worked out, this conversation wouldn't even be happening. So when investors think they know more than proven long-term investment managers, I'm thinking that may be the case in just a handful of situations. In most circumstance, it's because the investor was lucky. When Prem made the bet to buy TIG and C&F, no one thought that was a bad deal at the time. As big as the deal was, there was considerable protection in place...buying at 60-70% of book, a billion dollar reinsurance contract protecting against future losses, and paying with overvalued shares. Yet the deal went wrong because the losses were just far greater than the reinsurance policy could cover. Was that someone getting a big head, or just something that went wrong even though all the precautions were in place? Berkowitz didn't do anything differently than he has in his past, but the bets went the wrong way because he was early. If anyone thinks that a year or two is enough to judge a fund managers performance, than I think they are simply speaking from the obvious view of "what have you done for me lately!" Investors on this board always talk about long-term or how they will hold forever, but when things go sideways, investors rarely think about long-term. In Berkowitz's case, most of his "long-term" investors were thinking solely from a "short-term" view. And as I said at that time, they will be proven wrong in the long-term. Short-term, if they pulled their money, it was more of a matter of luck in timing, because that's exactly what it is...timing! Cheers! Well said regarding the conventional investor's view on Berkowitz and the luck of getting out at the right time. However, it's worth pointing out that the folks on this thread who have expressed pretty negative views on Berkowitz appear to be criticizing him for the investment in JOE and, specifically, for his trying to take over the company and run it better (their words, not mine). I'd like to hear more from them on why they think he's trying to run the company and whether they would have different views of him if he had not put any money into JOE. I don't think he had a whole lot of choice with JOE. He waited for management to move things forward, and they were being attacked by Einhorn, so what could he really do except shake things up. Prem is now on the board of RIMM...do we criticize him for being a little more hands on to protect his investment? JOE is doing better now with Berkowitz on there, so I think he did the right thing actually. Cheers!

I agree 100%. But you'll probably get trashed by some on this board for saying it. They think that just because someone has done great for a while that they can never do wrong. They will sell a stock when Mr. Market pushes it stupidly high but when all that money came into Fairholme and Berkowitz decided he was going to try and be a Buffett or Lampert and it was weak money that was driving the price they would say you were stupid for selling Fairholme. He should have stuck with what he knows and what the long term investors originally bought into. No matter how great the St. Joe land development story might turn out, he should stick with what he had made his name doing. I think it was more of a matter of luck than anything else in making that decision. If things had worked out, this conversation wouldn't even be happening. So when investors think they know more than proven long-term investment managers, I'm thinking that may be the case in just a handful of situations. In most circumstance, it's because the investor was lucky. When Prem made the bet to buy TIG and C&F, no one thought that was a bad deal at the time. As big as the deal was, there was considerable protection in place...buying at 60-70% of book, a billion dollar reinsurance contract protecting against future losses, and paying with overvalued shares. Yet the deal went wrong because the losses were just far greater than the reinsurance policy could cover. Was that someone getting a big head, or just something that went wrong even though all the precautions were in place? Berkowitz didn't do anything differently than he has in his past, but the bets went the wrong way because he was early. If anyone thinks that a year or two is enough to judge a fund managers performance, than I think they are simply speaking from the obvious view of "what have you done for me lately!" Investors on this board always talk about long-term or how they will hold forever, but when things go sideways, investors rarely think about long-term. In Berkowitz's case, most of his "long-term" investors were thinking solely from a "short-term" view. And as I said at that time, they will be proven wrong in the long-term. Short-term, if they pulled their money, it was more of a matter of luck in timing, because that's exactly what it is...timing! Cheers!

Probably not. But banking is actually a simple business when you keep it to the basics of deposits, lending and investments. Everyone has the same spreads. Everyone has the same target client base. The low cost operators, who stay away from esoteric and risky products, keeping their company's best interest and their client's best interest at heart, will do fine long-term. It's when the pigs get greedy you start to see problems. Moynihan strikes me as the "keep it simple, stupid" type, and he'll just run a plain old national banking business while being one of the low-cost operators in the industry. If he does just that, the bank will trade at book and grow at a very nice ROE long-term. Cheers!

Buying hand over fist! ;D Cheers!

Looks like BAC is going to try and sell all of their properties except NC and NYC. Hey, maybe Moynihan reads this message board! ;D Cheers! http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-03/bank-of-america-weighing-sale-of-all-properties-except-two-main-offices.html

Photos of Buffett with students. Click on the photograph in the article to start the slideshow. Some very funny, campy pictures of Buffett. You can see exactly how big of a ham he is. Loved it! Cheers! http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2012/02/03/warren-buffett-gets-silly-a-slideshow/?mod=yahoo_hs

Article on Burlington's plans. Cheers! http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/blog/morning_call/2012/02/burlington-northern-plans-39-billion.html?ana=yfcpc

WSJ article on Buffett and housing. Cheers! http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Buffett-Patient-Bet-Housing-tsmf-1774461908.html?x=0

Means little, but it is interesting nonetheless. Cheers! http://blogs.barrons.com/stockstowatchtoday/2012/02/02/bank-of-america-ge-insiders-buying-stock/?mod=yahoobarrons

The suit may be amended, but this is a big decision in BAC's favor if upheld and could apply to other suits against the company. Cheers! http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-03/bank-of-america-wins-dismissal-from-allstate-countrywide-suit.html?cmpid=yhoo

Article on Waterloo and how it is influenced by RIM. Cheers! http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-news/as-company-struggles-waterloo-is-rims-city-of-angst/article2318797/