Parsad

We arrived bright and early at the Delhi Train Station. Looked relatively empty until we got closer to departure time. Suddenly, the throng of commuters became apparent and we were surrounded by people. We quickly boarded our private car in the Gatiman Express and made our way to Agra at a top speed of 160 km/h. After arriving in Agra, our coaches took us on a short trip to the entry way of the Taj Mahal complex. We then shifted to small golf carts that took us right to the Taj Mahal Gateway. Agra was quite different than Delhi. The air was much cleaner, and the city less dense. The one thing we noticed while travelling on the train to Agra was that there was huge amounts of land between the cities where the population was far less dense. As we disembarked our golf carts and made our way through the Gateway, the stunning view of the Taj Mahal left us all breathless. Magnificent, grand, towering, gleaming in a white alabaster aura as the sun reflected off of it. It was a postcard moment, and again, a nod to the stunning architectural brilliance of India. Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal over 22 years with his own private wealth in memory of his favorite wife, Mumtaz. The laborers were all paid very well in their time, and the engineering marvel was their crowning glory! How could Indians not look on the Taj Mahal, and believe that anything is possible for them! After the Taj Mahal, our coaches took us for lunch, and then on to a military airport, where we caught our private chartered flight to Jaipur. After arriving in Jaipur, we made our way to the historic and stunning Rambaugh Palace, which is an oasis smack in the middle of the city. We are warmly greeted by the staff of the Rambaugh Palace and performers. Everyone has a specific staff member who guides them to their room and gives an overview of the hotel. What was originally the living quarters of the Prince of Jaipur, became a hotel after the Prince realized he needed to improve his cash flow to maintain his lifestyle. The grounds are stunning, and one can only imagine how a single person lived on this property with only his staff waiting on him! Again, the disparity between the "haves" and the "have nots" is deafening...more so than in North America!

After breakfast in the Qube Restaurant at the Leela Palace Hotel in Delhi, we made our way on coaches to Old Delhi. A significant amount of spice, nut, grain trading still occurs here in the wholsale market. At one time, India accounted for 25% of global GDP...I suspect India and China combined, will do that once again within a couple of decades. Old Delhi and our rickshaw rides through it, were in stark contrast to the modern, sophisticated touch of say the Leela Palace Hotel. This was India as well, very different than what we saw previously and what we will see going forward. If nothing, India truly is a study in contrasts...it's people, economies, cities, culture, dialects, etc! Old Delhi was a clear view of what will have to change in the future. Modi's attempts at getting accountability from all citizens is essential...pay your taxes, pay your fair share of utilities, etc. The barrage of utility wires you see intertwined between small low-rise buildings and hanging over the central walkways and thoroughfares is mind boggling. How do you even tell which wire leads to which home?! From Old Delhi, we headed over to a terrific Asian cuisine restaurant called Spice Route. There we met up with the team from Fairfax India, including Chandran Ratnaswami, head of Fairfax India. After lunch, we made a visit to UNESCO heritage site Qutab Minar, which was built in the 12th century. A spiraling, majestic minaret, that showcased the tip of the iceberg of Indian engineering and construction feats! After a brief respite back at the hotel, we all made our way to Canada House, where the High Commissioner of Canada in India, Nadir Patel, was waiting for us. We had a wonderful dinner in an open courtyard of Canada House. Nadir spoke about the potential of Indian-Canadian relationships, and we met a number of Canadian who offered their contacts to help facilitate business in India. From Canada House, we headed back to the Leela Palace Hotel for some rest before departing to Agra the next morning!

Sorry folks, I've been fighting a bad case of Montezuma's Revenge for the last three days, and am taking antibiotics. I have a ton of posts and pictures I will put up probably in the next couple of days while in Mumbai. The trip has been extraordinary...barring the stomach issues...I think all participants have been blown away by what we've seen. BIAL alone in the Fairfax India portfolio would have been great, but add Catholic Syrian Bank, IIFL, SanMar, etc and it's a great portfolio. But you have to on the ground here...you cannot do it just from overseas...knowing the culture, politics, economics, etc all play a part. Cheers!

Flew into Delhi's Mahatma Ghandhi Airport on Cathay Pacific. As we approach our landing, it becomes very obvious that there is a tremendous amount of smog...you could see it at night, hovering over the city and its residents! Delhi Airport looks a bit dated, but is cleaner than I expected. Our attendant from the Leela Palace Hotel in Delhi greets us after the baggage pickup and guides us to our BMW 5 Series car and driver. As we walk through the terminal, it is much more modern than the area we walked through after disembarking the plane. As we exit the Airport parking, Delhi's traffic becomes glaringly obvious. It's about 10:30pm, but the roads look like rush hour in New York. Drivers jostle for space, as there is no such thing as lanes anymore...the lines are there for foreign rental car drivers...Indians don't seem to use them as cars, motorbikes, trucks, tuk-tuks all fight for their little gap to drive through. Unlike North America where a honk usually is accompanied with the "finger", the honks here in Delhi's traffic are simply a warning to let other driver's know you are there. We drive into the Leela Palace Hotel's driveway, and there is a security checkpoint. The staff open our doors after the checkpoint, and we get out and are greeted warmly, and then guided to the security screening and metal detector. The staff opens the hotel doors and we are led into the hotel, where a hostess continues the warm salutations and places a fresh flower garland around our necks. The lobby is magnificent! I struggle once again with the concept of seeing the two very diverse sides of India...the vast amount of wealth and luxury, and the abject poverty that breaks ones heart. Tonight is luxury...I'm certainly not complaining! The next morning, after a nice breakfast in the hotel, we hired a driver for two hours to take us around Delhi. We visited Humayan's Tomb, the Presidental Palace, Parliament Buildings, Connaught Place, India Gate, etc. For my Mom, who I brought with me, this was a trip of contrasts. She last came to India 36 years earlier with my Father back in 1982. The Ambassador cars and tuk-tuks were mostly replaced now with Hyundai's, Kias, Tatas, BMW's, Mercedes and Suzuki's. While the historical sites remain, it is clear that Delhi is going through something. The question is whether it is China 15 years ago, or just India going through another cycle. For me, the smog is the most obvious characteristic. It is noticeable in every way possible...visually, by smell, and literally touch as the residue shows up each morning when you take a shower and blow your nose! I remember the smog over Los Angeles in the 70's. It was bad, but was never as thick as what floats above Delhi. Beijing after a 5-day dry spell around summer comes closest to mind. Contrary to opinion, the Chinese have done a remarkable job in terms of air quality over the last decade...India will have to do the same...more electric/hybrid cars, buses, scrubbers and clean energy. It's not a question of "if", but "when" India will pour more money into these initiatives. After 60 years, like China, India under Modi is being forced to change. Disposable income is increasing, the obvious young population of India is optimistic and driven...and like China, India is going to have to pour massive amounts of capital into infrastructure, housing and energy. Prem estimated at the last AGM, that India needs 40 km of new roads every single day. That may actually be an understatement! Along with roads you need all other components of infrastructure to complement it...schools, hospitals, sewers, water, electricity, etc. There is a trickle down effect when the country spends enormous amounts of capital on infrastructure, and India either has to spend trillions or fall behind. After touring the city, we make our way back to the hotel. I decided to go for a swim in the Leela Palace Hotel's rooftop infinity pool. As I swim in the stunning pool with nearly 360 degree views of Delhi city,, listening to the feint honks of cars 14 stories below, I can only wonder what India will look like 10-20-30 years down the road. Total population between India and China is relatively close today, yet less than 400M Indians have internet access, while over 750M Chinese have internet access. India's population is far younger than China's, and while there remains rampant corruption, India does have the rule of law, democratic elections, enforceable courts and strong property rights. That can't be said about China! Change is here! Can we identify what and who succeeds in India over the next 20-30 years? Cheers!

I will be doing a blog in this thread for 7 days regarding the Fairfax Financial Shareholder's India Trip. About 45 of us are going on this tour, which will include tours of Indian cultural sites and meetings with Fairfax India company executives. I will record our adventure, including photos of the trip. Cheers!

Merry Christmas everyone! Thanks for all of your contributions and support through the year. All the best! Cheers!

And theoretically, Belichick did the correct thing (based on probabilities) by putting Gronk in the backfield to catch a hail Mary. Guess what? He was the pylon sitting there as the player ran by him for the touchdown! Calculated risk? That ended up being one hell of an insurance loss! ;D Cheers!

Hi BG, You can go to your "Profile"/"Account Settings"/"Modify Profile"/"Ignore Board Options"...then just select the "Politics" board. Cheers!

Happy Thanksgiving to our U.S. colleagues! Cheers!

Thanks John! Yes, that is the correct answer. One of our largest partners who made up over 30% of the Canadian fund pulled out shortly after we invested in PDH...I was also sorry to hear he passed away from a form of cancer a few months later. But that hurt our liquidity when things started to go south with PDH. After struggling to reduce the position size and rebalance the fund, we realized we were doing a disservice to our Canadian partners...especially with our size and operating costs. So we liquidated the Canadian fund, distributed the assets and made four of our partners who had invested in the last few years 100% whole with our own money. All of the partners walked away with 100% of their original capital or far better...which makes us proud! We chose to close the fund and so we felt that was the right thing to do. With the U.S. fund, we actually were able to rebalance the fund as we had maintained liquidity and didn't have a large partner redeem like the Canadian fund. With capital put in by Prem and our existing partners, excellent results on our non-PDH assets for the last 3 years (averaged about 29% annualized), we were able to stay about even as we faced PDH's challenges...essentially we lost about $5M in PDH value and made about $6M in non-PDH value over the last 3 years. The U.S. fund is not going to be closed, operates at less than a 30 basis point expense ratio, and it's actually in excellent shape with PDH making up about 12% of assets and the rest non-PDH, liquid, mid-large cap equities. We believe the fund is trading presently at about 55% of intrinsic value and are more than happily accepting new partners! So, yes we threw in the towel with the Canadian fund (which was one-tenth the size of the U.S. fund), but have no plans to throw in the towel with the U.S. fund or PDH. And this message board isn't going anywhere either! Cheers!

LotsofCoke started the discussion about Marvel on this message board back when it was the MSN Value Investing board about 15 years ago. I remember he bought a ton of shares for himself and his children around 50 cents to $2. He argued that there was an enormous catalogue of intellectual property that was now going to be monetized into movies. I don't think anyone, including Stan Lee himself, imagined that the Marvel movie machine engine would be as prolific or as good as it is today. I used to run around our house as a four year old dressed up in a Spiderman outfit. Now my four old nephew runs around the house dressed up as Spiderman or Black Panther on any given day! Cheers Stan Lee!

I've taken another tack, and that is to limit myself to a modest update on the news for the first 7 days of each month. Ditto for Twitter & I found myself not even wanting to visit there this month because it's so full of inflammatory nonsense. Spending nearly a month with your head in the sand is liberating. I highly recommend watching re-runs of Rowan & Martin's Laugh In to see how nothing has changed since the 70's. The absurdities are pretty funny when framed by great social satirists. The Obamas thread was about divorce... and only highlighted the Obamas as a great example of a couple who makes it work. Nothing political about it. It was also moved over to the Politics board early this morning. I will try and make sure no political threads end up on any section other than the Politics board...that is the purpose of the Politics board...to keep that stuff off of the other boards. Otherwise it will end up there! Cheers!

I didn't see the original email reminder, but just saw it in the one today. Mohnish's lunch is at a dirt cheap price today of $11,300! What do you get...a lunch with a fantastic investor for you and 7 friends. All proceeds go to the Dakshana Foundation. Only 22 hours left to bid: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Power-Lunch-with-Mohnish-Pabrai-Founder-of-Dakshana-Foundation/123460245966 Cheers and good luck!

Few things: Catastrophe losses may be higher than expected...volatility in market prices...drop in developing markets and currencies like India. If so, what are the outcomes: Short term losses in catastrophe, but higher premium prices for the market and FFH...the stock market always recovers...they can buy more Indian businesses at cheaper prices. Short-term the market is a voting machine...thus the volatility and market price drop. In the long-term it's a weighing machine...if you are holding it for the long-term, go occupy yourself with something else like a nice glass of wine and dinner, a weekend excursion, a baseball game or do some chores around the house. ;D Cheers!

How long have you guys noticed this?

Some people are happy that way. I'm perfectly content to sit in my house and look for stock ideas or read...or watch my Canucks...or a football game. You don't have to go bungee-jumping and zip-lining while curing your own artisan meats, and then ride your bike through the streets of Paris to be happy. Sometimes a cup of coffee and a donut is all you need! Cheers!

Well, at least FFH won. The money is bugger-all and, even if it's actually collectible (that's a big if), it probably doesn't even come close to covering FFH's cumulative legal expenses. But, at least it silenced the short-and-distort crowd. SJ On a cost-return basis it may not have been attractive. In terms of getting some of these miscreants to pay and having our day in court...it was worth it! That being said, some didn't really get their just desserts...Cohen, Loeb, Herb Greenberg, Peter Eavis, John Hempton, etc. Cheers!

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen passed away from complications related to cancer. https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/15/tech/paul-allen-dead/index.html

And he's done it in alot less time than anyone else with injuries, not starting early on, etc. Depending on when Brees retires, it's either going to be him or Brady. I think Brees can play another 3-5 years, and Brady has no plans of retiring in the next 5 years. Cheers!

Name one technology CEO from Gates era that got it perfectly right. Also, he essentially stepped down in 2000, before the internet even really took off and essentially handed everything over to Ballmer to focus on extracurricular activities and his private wealth. Gates remains in the top five wealthiest people in the world by any measure, and pretty much in all calculations stands second to Bezos. How badly did he really drop the ball! Cheers! Well maybe a lot of others didn't get it perfectly right. But someone seriously dropped the ball at Microsoft. I don't know I can't really tell if it's Gates, Balmer, or organizational inertia/incompetence. Now, don't get me wrong, I like Microsoft, it's incredibly successful, I own a lot of it and made a lot of money owning it. But if you go back and read their ARs like way back, it is freakishly weird how well they called the future. About most things. Search, mobile, etc - not so much online shopping. So they had the insight. They had the vision. But they failed to execute - i.e. dropped the ball. If they did follow through and executed on their vision Microsoft would be worth at least 4 times what they are now. That's in excess of a trillion bucks. These are mind bending numbers to leave on the table. For a Microsoft shareholder that is tragic. I'm not talking about Microsoft. I'm talking about Gates. Charlie Munger sits on the board of Costco, knew Gates and Buffett, and still Costco will have a hard time in the future with Amazon. Does that mean someone dropped the ball at Costco, or simply a better CEO came along with a better model? Great CEO's are often discarded because their companies failed to prosper relative to history, but even if they continued to prosper relative to industry, they are still relegated as mediocre leaders. Do people really think that a Berkshire run by Greg Abel, where insurance is run by Ajit Jain and the board by Bill Gates, isn't going to work? Cheers! I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. Sure, Gates is Gates, and Microsoft is Microsoft. They're both really successful. But when I'm talking about these insights Gates was maybe even CEO of Microsoft. Probably around the borderline. And I'm not talking here about someone else coming with a better model. They had the model! Almost to a tee! Then someone else did it. That's pretty infuriating from a shareholder's point of view. Now one may say that Gates doesn't care about that, that he's made enough money and he's now focused on curing malaria and AIDS. Btw, I admire a lot what the Gates foundation has achieved and what it aims to achieve. But wouldn't they be in a stronger position to achieve goals if Gates had 150 billion instead of 50 billion? That's the Buffett philanthropic principle. Gates left the CEO job in 2000. He has nearly $100B and is right behind Bezos. Now he's managed his wealth better than Buffett...does that make him a better CEO than Buffett? Of course not. Just like Gates isn't a worse CEO than Bezos, Zuckerberg or the Google co-founders. These are some of the greatest leaders in modern business...we're splitting hairs when comparing them. So it's ridiculous when people say that Gates missed the boat...Buffett missed Walmart and Apple. Cheers!

Name one technology CEO from Gates era that got it perfectly right. Also, he essentially stepped down in 2000, before the internet even really took off and essentially handed everything over to Ballmer to focus on extracurricular activities and his private wealth. Gates remains in the top five wealthiest people in the world by any measure, and pretty much in all calculations stands second to Bezos. How badly did he really drop the ball! Cheers! Well maybe a lot of others didn't get it perfectly right. But someone seriously dropped the ball at Microsoft. I don't know I can't really tell if it's Gates, Balmer, or organizational inertia/incompetence. Now, don't get me wrong, I like Microsoft, it's incredibly successful, I own a lot of it and made a lot of money owning it. But if you go back and read their ARs like way back, it is freakishly weird how well they called the future. About most things. Search, mobile, etc - not so much online shopping. So they had the insight. They had the vision. But they failed to execute - i.e. dropped the ball. If they did follow through and executed on their vision Microsoft would be worth at least 4 times what they are now. That's in excess of a trillion bucks. These are mind bending numbers to leave on the table. For a Microsoft shareholder that is tragic. I'm not talking about Microsoft. I'm talking about Gates. Charlie Munger sits on the board of Costco, knew Gates and Buffett, and still Costco will have a hard time in the future with Amazon. Does that mean someone dropped the ball at Costco, or simply a better CEO came along with a better model? Great CEO's are often discarded because their companies failed to prosper relative to history, but even if they continued to prosper relative to industry, they are still relegated as mediocre leaders. Do people really think that a Berkshire run by Greg Abel, where insurance is run by Ajit Jain and the board by Bill Gates, isn't going to work? Cheers!

Name one technology CEO from Gates era that got it perfectly right. Also, he essentially stepped down in 2000, before the internet even really took off and essentially handed everything over to Ballmer to focus on extracurricular activities and his private wealth. Gates remains in the top five wealthiest people in the world by any measure, and pretty much in all calculations stands second to Bezos. How badly did he really drop the ball! Cheers!

Hi All, As many of you know, I spend some of my time involved in non-profit work...blasphemy! I'm the chair of the Cystic Fibrosis "65 Roses" Gala in Vancouver again this year. My co-Chair passed away back in April when I had my own health scare (I'm perfectly fine now and will be around for 20-30 years), but she was the longest surviving double-transplant (heart/lung) in Canadian history. So this year, we are doing something a bit more special in her memory, and I'm soliciting donations from my compatriot board members. No donation is too big or small, and I really would appreciate it! I provide this board essentially free to all users, and I've never asked for anything for myself. So if you feel you get some value out of the message board, please translate some of that value into a donation for the "65 Roses" Gala. https://www.cf65roses.com/lite-ui/?controller=home Much appreciated and my sincerest thanks! Cheers!

My friend Andrew Wilkinson, founder of Metalabs, has one of the most unique stories I've ever heard. He started Metalabs when he was about 18 and grew it into the business that it is today...and he's barely into his early 30's. With the excess cashflows from Metalabs, he founded his investment company, Tiny. Through Tiny, he and partner Chris Sparling, have made numerous acquisitions and investments in startups, cash flowing businesses, etc. If we can get enough interest going on here, maybe I can get Andrew to speak at next year's Fairfax dinner! He likes to keep a low profile, but I suspect in another 10 years, a lot of people will know his name! If you've got a business you want to sell, contact Tiny, Premier Diversified Holdings, or our friends at Enterprise Diversified...we are all looking! Cheers! http://tiny.website/

Absolutely! But Gates hired Larson, who has been doing the job for over 20 years now. If you are looking for someone to put quality people in place, I think Bill Gates not only has the contacts, he has the same respect Buffett does in terms of people wanting to work for him. That would make an ideal Chairman, especially since so much of Berkshire stock will be in the Gates Foundation...essentially, they will be the largest shareholder. Cheers!