Parsad

I sent Diane Francis an email today regarding the article: Dear Diane, I am a long-time Fairfax Financial shareholder, who is friends with hundreds of other Fairfax shareholders. Some have owned Fairfax from day one, and some are recent buyers. We have immensely enjoyed your interviews with Prem over the last few months. Many of us were somewhat disappointed in the tone of your article today. Not that it was necessarily lacking in fact, as Fairfax Financial has done better than any other property-casualty insurer in the world in 2008. No, the disappointment stems from elsewhere. Despite several interviews with Prem, we believe you may not have grasped the essence of what makes him a great leader to begin with...his humility! We can only shudder and gasp at the inflammatory title of your article, and wonder exactly how Prem felt about that. As long-term shareholders, we can assure you he would never take any pleasure in such a statement, nor would he ever equate himself with Buffett...one of his heroes and mentors. In fact, Prem would be the very first person to remind you that Fairfax had a very difficult time from 2003-2006, while Berkshire prospered handsomely. A period in which the very existence of Fairfax was in jeopardy. The reason Fairfax survived wasn't because Prem is some kind of six-sigma genius, but that his humility earned him trust from the likes of the Markels, Cundill and Sir JohnTempleton, and the great team of employees at Fairfax whose loyalties know no bounds. I hope you don't view this letter as a negative. If anything, it should be viewed as something positive, as there is much to Prem Watsa that the mainstream media does not know and has yet to explore. Ideally, it should begin with his humility. Yours truly, Sanjeev Parsad Corner Market Capital Corporation Suite 1620, Box 36 1140 West Pender Street Vancouver, BC V6E4G1 phone: 604.612.3965 fax: 866.279.2907 e-mail: sanjeevparsad@shaw.ca www.cornermarketcapital.com

For those that were having difficulty printing the report, Fairfax has fixed the security measures that were in place previously, and you can now print the reports with no problem. I've had the flu for the last few days, and didn't even realize that Fairfax had put out their annual report on Friday! ??? Just read it this morning...good stuff! Cheers!

I like the investorvillage format a lot better. Thoughts? The vast majority of board members here actually prefer a simple forum. At Investor Village, you actually have to go to each ticker symbol message board, not unlike Yahoo, Stockhouse or The Fool. We have just three boards...Fairfax, Berkshire and General. Investor Village also has all sorts of features that hardly anyone would use here such as the blog boards, and we don't have the ability to add market quotes, etc. We can add some news and feeds, but not full quotes with charts, etc. This may be the wrong board for you if you would like those additional features. Berkshire Hathaway has probably the simplest website around, outside of Leucadia's, but they both serve their purpose. That's all we are doing here. Just a simple forum where people can chat about ideas. We'll throw interviews on the blog, and that's about it outside of the occasional get together. Members can adjust the profile and administrative settings to make it better suited for their needs, but I don't think we'll be changing anything much anytime soon. This board is a breeze for me to moderate compared to the old MSN board, and it is much simpler to moderate than a board like Investor Village or The Motley Fool. Cheers!

Diane Francis' article from last week made The Huffington Post, which is Ariana Huffington's highly viewed U.S. site. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-francis/the-worlds-smartest-money_b_171184.html Cheers!

I thought I would post it, so if any of you guys ran into Feingold, you could give him a swift kick up the arse for me! Cheers!

That's what Buffett was doing back in 1981 Al. He said he was selling things trading at 3 times earnings to buy things trading at two times earnings. Cheers!

This is always so amusing, because all these same people panicking, were more than happy to see the S&P go well over 1500 back in late 2007. Now with the markets cut more than in half, many stocks trading for less than half of the net assets on the book, and dividend yields nearly double the long-term treasury yield, they are screaming as if the bottom is nowhere to be found and sunlight will never come pouring in through their office windows again! Cheers!

Another one crawling out from under a rock! Cheers! http://biz.yahoo.com/minyanville/090302/20090302snakeoil_id.html?.v=1

Thanks for the update Linkmont! I would like to try one, as well as a Steak'n Shake. Cheers!

Alex Crippen compiled an interesting set of headlines that the media took from this year's annual report. http://www.cnbc.com/id/29455306 That's probably indicative of a bottom, since Jim Cramer recently said some stuff again, and Doug Kass believes he knows much better. Cheers!

Well Oldye, I'm glad someone can still afford $64/bottle right now! ;D It's a recession. Shouldn't we all be drinking only peach schnapps? Cheers!

I don't understand why they didn't buy back any ORH in Q4. They bought none, yet it traded down to $32. It may have been an issue of exactly how big was ORH's discount to intrinsic value (even at $32) compared to what else had suddenly become available in the markets during Q4. Companies shouldn't just simply buy back their shares when they have excess operating capital, but only if the best alternative for shareholder capital is to buyback one's own stock. Cheers!

It was the prudent thing to do. I'm glad they thought about it and decided that capital in their hands would probably be better served in this environment than simply paying it out to shareholders. Cheers!

I'm not sure that stocks can be called "cheap" by any valuation measure right now. The earnings power of the S&P is going to be hampered for a long time because of what we're in the middle of right now. Forget stocks, if you think they are still expensive...which I don't. You can easily put together a porfolio of corporate, municipal and distressed bonds that will generate 10-12% over the next five years. If you can read financial statements and understand the debt obligations and cash flows of corporations, you can put together a portfolio of distressed debt that will yield 20-25% annualized for the next few years. Things are very cheap across the board except for treasuries. Good investors can do very well going forward regardless of the long-term implications of a long recession and economic slump. Cheers!

I'm not sure Bernanke said anything wrong there. He's basically saying that the stock market is reflecting the fears of investors and their apprehension to risk, while credit markets are starting to show signs of life. That's basically what I see from everything I'm reading. The premium for stocks, corporate bonds, municipal bonds, etc. today is something I have never experienced before. Never seen a market this cheap with spreads so damn wide. I've read about them, but never actually ever been in one or seen one. And that is completely attributable to investor fears, both retail and institutional. Cheers!

We have a lot of very good members here, some of whom are a little opinionated (hi Sanj & Ericopoly ) Eric and I totally disagree with you Uhuru! We think you're completely and utterly incorrect. You're just plain wrong! ;D

If I understand him correctly, he's saying that because the number of ideas has increased, he's therefore going to run a more diversified fund. Why wouldn't you still purchase your 10 best ideas, and simply enjoy the greater future returns because they are that much cheaper? How does the increase in number of good investment ideas warrant more diversification? I suspect that he's trying to explain away poor performance with a non sequitur. Our funds will remain very concentrated. But there are some aspects of what Mohnish is doing that is just logical. For example, we have bought distressed debt for the U.S. fund, and income trusts for the Canadian fund. In those circumstances, you are better off buying a small basket of ideas at relative yields, then concentrating on just one or two. In the past, when we've had a highly concentrated fund, it was because ideas were not plentiful. You really had to dig around for ideas. Today, you can find multitudes of ideas that are trading at huge discounts to their net asset value. Instead of having a fund in say 7-8 ideas, we have closer to 12-14. But we aren't going from 7-8 ideas to 25-30 ideas. We think that's just wasted effort. At the same time, we would be hesitant to ever go back down to just 4-5 ideas, except for our own corporate accounts where we have just 4 ideas where all the capital is invested. That's because the retail investor, be it in mutual funds or hedge funds, just don't have the stomach for this type of environment where their portfolio could be down 50%. It is simply too much for them! I think that is really the primary driver behind Mohnish's decision. I can only imagine the hell he's been going through dealing with his partners, who are going through their own equally scary hell of seeing their investments down 60% in the last year and half. I would suspect that's the part that drove Mark Sellers to close his fund as well. Human psychology does not change. No matter how much an individual says that they can handle volatility, only the truth becomes clear when the actual crisis appears. And not only retail investors. There are alot of investment managers who can't handle the swing as well. I think many will never re-enter this business after what they've experienced. Cheers!

Hi Uhuru, I guess for some of us, it was a big chunk of our life for the last seven years, and it directly affected most of our pocketbooks. To tell you the truth, I know for a fact that Fairfax also found it very useful in hearing from their shareholders, and how to provide them the information they needed. So, yes I think it was a small but very important little board for many people, and it's ok to be a bit sad about it disappearing. That being said, I think this board maintains the continuity, and we will be as prosperous on here as we were there. With continued support from our membership base, and contributions from each of those members, the sadness of losing the old board will dissipate quickly. Ironically, the old board was terminated exactly one day after its seventh anniversary! Cheers!

One of the problems with me moving the posts onto here was that the dates of the posts would be different, and some data would be missing because this board only can show posts in HTML. What I did was archive the old board and all its posts and documents at Multiply. It was fast and easy migrating all of them over, and it is accessible still to the general public. You can view the archive at: http://msnbrkboardarchive.multiply.com/ Click "Blog" and it will show all the various posts. Pages 1-6 are archived files and PDF's. After page 6, you get to the original thread posts with all replies that were posted under "Comment". The only downside to doing this is that there is no good "Search" feature for the posts. But at least the posts are preserved in their entirety, and they are visible, in order with original dates, and nothing is missing if it was written outside of HTML. Cheers!

That's rubbish! I'm not sure what those "peers" have told you, but I'm guessing alot of it has to do with C&F and TIG's impact over the last few years. Northbridge and Odyssey have outstanding underwriting standards and history. As does Fairfax Asia. The biggest problems were with Fairfax's U.S. insurance business and that was almost entirely attributable to C&F and TIG. It is also highly unlikely you will ever see a large property-casualty insurer get you underwriting profits of 5-10%. That just doesn't happen. Even Berkshire's historical underwriting profit has been only about 3.5-4%. And I don't think that can be sustained either, because as soon as one big earthquake hits the West Coast, National Indemnity is going to take a significant loss. Alot of people like to throw Markel's name out there, but much of their business is in specialty lines. In general, a property casualty underwriters long-term goal is to have break-even underwriting, with gains from invested float accounting for profit. The business is just far too competitive on pricing to allow any sustained underwriting profit for insurers. Thus the short, swift cycles we see all the time. Cheers!

Wonderful letter! Thanks very much!

Ok guys, no problem according to Godaddy.com. I set it to zero, and now you should be able to get full feed. Cheers!

Here's another of your twenty punches. My friend John Zemanovich and I were talking yesterday, and we think we are now getting very close to the same point in time when Buffett last issued a statement that he would be buying back shares. My estimate is that in the $72-75K range would put it in the same ballpark as in 2000, when the stock was in the $43-45K range and Buffett announced the buyback offer. The next time it gets this cheap will be sadly when our dear Warren leaves this earth. We'll see if Buffett says anything in the letter this year if prices stay where they are. Cheers!

Let me call Godaddy.com's technical support and just ask them. If there is no issues, I'll turn on the full feed and post that it is on here. I'll do it in the next 30 minutes or so. I'm just catching up on the morning emails and stuff. Thanks!

Ok guys, I've found the setting, but it says "to disable, set to zero". It then says setting to zero would be a bad idea? Why is that? Would it slow down the board? Would it cause any problems with the posts or board? Any other tech-savvy guys who can give me some idea why the program says it is a bad idea? Is it just that it could increase the costs, but then we have unlimited bandwidth and data, so I don't see how it would. Thanks very much!