Jurgis

Unless you are a lawyer, I think these should be treated as lottery tickets. Buy only if you have 10:1 payout or better. Don't invest more than 1% of portfolio. Sell if it runs up a lot without court decision - even if it seems that the news are positive. If you are a lawyer, you can relax the above constraints a bit. Still, unless you are a practicing lawyer in that jurisdiction and that area of law, I doubt you can relax them much. I.e. I doubt you can invest at 2:1 payout ratio and over 5% of portfolio.

Thanks. Might be a good idea. I haven't bought futures and futures options in the past, so I'd have to learn. :) I'll see if I have time/etc. My overall position in oil cos is about 10% of my portfolio. There are a few more companies in that, which are less attractive IMO, so I did not mention them before (SPND, DRAGF, APA, NOV, HAL, SXY bonds).

LOL. Especially how this went "whooosh" for some people. ;D

Right. But drilling does not equal production. So to cut 1Mn of production, drilling might have to drop (temporarily!) what 20-30%? Not 7% that is 1Mn/14Mn. Of course, you are right: there are different parts of the service. The parts that supply production rather than drilling would drop less. The parts that supply drilling itself will drop 20-30% - my rough guess. You are also right that "No Other Vendor" is good to turn to. I am not sure if market is very inefficient in this though. I think the stocks that cratered are mostly the ones that will suffer most. But you might be able to find some companies where price inefficiencies exist. My call on PWE, DNR, GTE was purely oil price call: i.e. that it will go back to $70+ sooner rather than later. I don't have strong arguments for it and I am definitely not going to try to convince others that I am right: most of these discussions are rehashes of old arguments and does not lead to productive results. I am open to ideas how else to play this though. :) Regards

You got it! You buy a bus for $198K and it provides 12% yield when you use it to show RE to Chinese RE tourists. 8)

Copy Ubben, buy HAL? :) I'm not that bullish on service stocks: IMHO, they could suffer even more than E&Ps since activity (drilling) drops hugely. While (some) E&Ps can survive by barely drilling and just selling a (declining) flow from existing wells.

rb, I like most of what you write, but I don't agree with the above. You are probably looking just at supermajors - and then you are right, they are not cheap. However, there is a lot of blood in small E&Ps. Companies like DNR, GTE, PWE (I own all of these). Of course, a lot of them are (over)levered, but some are not. And clearly you'd have to do a deep dd to figure out which ones are good candidates for investment. I don't claim my dd is deep or good. :)

Not bad Mephisto. 8) I'll go cynical: if there is a chance of collapse in the future, the best thing now would be to put this into private hands, so next time it collapses shareholders and bondholders can be "conserved" again. However, all these potentialities might assume more smarts and coordination than might be available in Washington. I continue to look at this as a option with pretty unknown chances, high potential payout and zero value otherwise. The price is the only thing that I look at. Things were much more attractive below $1. Right now the price is somewhat attractive, but not very much. If prefs run up to $20 on $50 as they were before recent collapse, that would be not attractive at all. :)

Right. Although I don't care much, I'd be happy to sign or vote for no divvie.

You're talking about the Citi Doublecash card. You get 1% cash back when you purchase and 1% when you pay your balance. The Citicard is a good card since the Amex is not accepted everywhere. Off topic: any idea why Citi went with this confusing scheme rather than straight 2% off? It's not as if they get much for it: if people don't pay off, they pay high rate, so even better for them. Unless this is to avoid paying 2% back for people who get the card and get 0%-rate for first year and keep the balance for that year. That might make sense.

Yeah, but you don't expect them to keep making the same mistake year after year. This is why I think it is bad capital allocation decision as opposed to an honest one off mistake made by management. I said "other than that". Anyway, if it's so significant for you, don't invest. Or write to Prem and request that he cans the divvie.

Personally, Amex never held prestige to me. My main "non-special" card is Fidelity Amex that gives 2% back. But I'd hold any other card that gives 2% back if it was available. And it would be simpler to me if it was Visa or MC. (Yes, I think there is Citi something which does 2% back in two stages... it seemed confusing to me :)). I have a bunch of other "special offer"/"special situation" cards (Amazon, TJX, 5% categories, airline, no foreign fees). None of them are Amex. There might be a segment of population for whom Amex means prestige. Not for me.

+1. I'm continuously surprised how biased this board is towards FFH despite the moves of the past few years. Which moves? Personally, I agree that they should not pay dividend. Other than that, of course they make mistakes. Buffett makes mistakes too. Everybody does. Is there a perfect company that doesn't? Tell me the ticker and I'll buy it immediately. ;D

"When my grandfather died, they used a trust to transfer the shares to Bill Gates." The human mind at work... And the movie... (via a link in the piece above) :o For people who want more drama and entertainment: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/2004-01-29-nebraska_x.htm - more about Nielsen family feud http://dealbreaker.com/2010/04/warren-buffett-hit-with-lawsuit-by-rv-dealer/ - Buffett accused by a sub exec http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/buffett-tax-netjets/2012/03/27/id/433991/ - govt suit against NetJets

About 800+ in custom Excel spreadsheets + 1 master spreadsheet + ~4000 stocks reviewed (mostly 2 minute reviews) and discarded and noted why in same. Mostly posting for p***s envy. ;D Not sure this was useful much. :) Using the SMF addin in Excel (edited: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/smf_addin/info - login required?) to get the data from Google/Yahoo + direct MSN import for MSN price/market cap/etc.

Maybe he did say that they were expensive as was first reported. 8)

"When my grandfather died, they aliens used a trust to transfer the shares to Bill Gates." Here. Fixed that.

I agree with rb

Right. That's one of the reasons most insurance companies still trade at book or below book even after the tremendous bull market we've had last couple years.

For stock competitions find a biotech that has drug announcement within the competition timeframe, select it and ... profit. Or not. 8)

They clearly perform better than cash and any non-trivial-longevity bonds. Anyway, read what Buffett said and all that. :) And I agree with rb. Just a note that Fairfax's competitive advantage against other insurance companies is their stocks and captive business portfolio. The same as BRK - though BRK has possibly better quality inflation resistant businesses and stock holdings.

I love how people keep repeating this without spending even a minute to check the facts. Apparently all the 40-80% capex drop announcements are fiction.

I think simple answer is that FFH will perform better than other insurance companies since they hold some percentage of stocks instead of bonds and presumably stocks work better than bonds in inflation / rising rates. But that's just simple thought. There might be other more complicated answers.

The stock price is over $500 per share. Of course it's expensive! Duh, what are you guys thinking... Just kidding 8)

Today's jump is likely due to Brit Plc. purchase and not due to delayed reaction to Q4 results. That said, I decided to go "passive investor" at New Year's by selling most my positions and putting my money into Fairfax. I bought most of my planned allocation before today's jump. It's better to be lucky than smart. 8)