JAllen

I don't know how and why MCF isn't more popular. It remains my largest percentage and absolute investment ever. I hope I'm right and that pronouncing this publicly will cause me to review/think about it all for the thousandth time! Please poke holes except for saying gas could go to zero. This doesn't jeopardize me or MCF.

The Sears bonds and preferred indentures (SSRAP) are still trading in the low teen yields if anyone wants them. I think the bonds that I own are trading for about $.60 and I bought some more (they're very illiquid) SSRAP the other day for $13 or so. Feel free to tell me what a crappy credit Sears is.

Yeah, Let's not even consider Freddie and Fannie. They make AIG look like fun. Purportedly they are upping the support or I don't even know what you call it to about 800 big ones. WOW! I think that dwarves any potential profitability from the other bailouts. I wonder what Freddie/Fannie is going to do with all of that money? It should be more than enough for the two, no?

Partner, If it is easy as you suggest to identify beforehand which of the Phoenix type of investments that Prem has made will work out perhaps you could identify today amongst the various fallen angels that FFH has exposure to will work out and why. I actually thought I would get a similar response like this from my post as well. I think it would be interesting to perhaps vote on each new major investment (perhaps greater than 3-4% of book?) Fairfax makes. Although, investment durations and opinions might make it hard to have a binary outcome vote be effective. Perhaps a poll such as the 4 possible returns (or book value growth was it?) polls I think we have had for Fairfax and Berkshire going forward? And I feel like I should say this again: we all make mistakes!

Yes, I see exactly where you are coming from Stubble. I don't disagree with your view at all. I actually believed that we had much more than minuscule chances of what you're describing and would have made much more money if I didn't. There were only a select few people throwing cash at new investments, especially real estate last fall. Perhaps me being one of the few with a Reit specifically (PLD), affords me my view. I have to say it was weird buying a Reit at the time but I estimated that PLD was selling for about 1/8 of its value under even a somewhat dire scenario (not anything like 25% employment). I haven't looked at H&R at length but I guess Fairfax was thinking that it wasn't going to get quite that bad and that was my GUESS as well. I should probably add that I work in real estate so perhaps my view is different than others because of this. As most of the other formerly British countries/colonies would say: Cheers! (I'm U.S)

I disagree that H&R Reit was equivalent to Torstar, and Abitibi. H&R had a lease signed to one of the largest petroleum producers in Canada for their new building that was semi-constructed. Torstar etc. are in secular declines, petroleum is now entering the greatest period of the industry's existence in my opinion. I didn't voice any opinion on any of these beforehand but I consider H&R Reit to have been a substantially safer investment than many of the grenades Fairfax has invested in the last couple of years. Some of the grenades could have been purchased at much lower prices had patience reigned king. Nevertheless, I support Fairfax completely and have owned the stock for 3.5 years now. We all make mistakes!

Have we reached peak production of oil???? I wasn't really referring to production more the fact that there are fixed quantities of both Gold and Oil on our planet. Gold has an increasing supply (as in the hands of humans or proved reserves in the ground) whereas as the supply of oil(human or unknown/undiscovered) is fixed but we are slowly exploding 80M barrels per day of it.(although we might not have reached the peak yet of production or human supply). In 30 years the Gold supply will be much greater and the supply of oil will be greatly reduced. I would also rather own assets that are required by a greater percentage of the population. I've never desired/required any memorable quantity of Gold and us Americans don't pump Gold in to our gas tanks everyday to get to work. Of course you can't smuggle a barrel of oil out of Nazi Germany but we don't live in Nazi Germany. These are just my thoughts and I don't think Gold is worth zero, of course, it's just never been very attractive to me and I would never own it for capital appreciation, maybe diversification though and even then <5% of NW. Land seems much more desirable also to gold. Most of it can produce cash albeit in small amounts but provide 5%+ real returns from timber (at least in the American South this is true). As far as houses not being a good store of value right now one could argue the same thing for Gold in the 80s.

It seems more desirable to own a commodity that is being depleted not increasing in supply.

That's funny. I watched the movie that scene comes from last night!

I won't start answering because I thought that it was fairly easy except when I read the paper the answer for the third question was not the one I imagined. After further thought, I think the paper is wrong. I actually hope that I am wrong and not the paper because that would mean that a whole bunch of people either didn't check their work or the entire study is worthless!

Here is a more detailed link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/capmark-financial-group-inc-enters,946905.shtml

Does anyone know background info on their mortgage company investment that was made in 2006?

If they can make the best battery than they will win the battle. They also have the opportunity to sell drivetrain parts, batteries etc. to third-party operators. They are going to pick one American and two European operators to sell to. Doing it this way is probably higher ROIC than developing the entire car, network etc. (Although they're already doing that to some extent). http://evworld.com/news.cfm?newsid=21590

When they have $2/ft. leases rolling off I would be shutting stores also. They have been trying to get bought out of below market leases from their landlords so the landlords can potentially get greater rent from a new tenant at today's rates. I don't know how many owned and how many leased have been shutting down though. They have had gains on R.E sales of $59M in the last 26 weeks which, I believe, is much greater than when I looked last year.

I don't think it's overvalued.

I always find his permanently (somewhat) large Boston Scientific position interesting.

This is good news, right? It looks like ORH has been buying shares on the open market and also bought a large chunk of shares from the Holdco (or whichever FFH subsidiary owns ORH shares). ORH will cancel all those shares. This gives FFH cash to use at whichever entity "sold" the shares to ORH. And it also strengthens the case that FFH is going to buy ORH because why would they sell the shares? They sold them because they know they're just going to buy back the company soon . . . Am I wrong? Why would they sell them to ORH now and buy them back higher in a few months?

Can anyone shed any light on the natural disasters that seem to be popping up every which way in Asia? They shouldn't have huge exposures but my guess is that there is some.

Why only $150 is my question. It's almost immaterial.

Thanks for taking the time and effort to do that Tariq. It's much appreciated!

There's a huge difference between owning a handful of stocks and predicting that the entire S&P 500 is going to move in one direction or another. It's barely comparable in my opinion.

Wow! That didn't take long. It sounds like they weren't just engaging in Naked short selling but trying to cover it up as well!

I think Mr. Sellers did allow redemptions because Sellers Capital sold a bunch of MCF in April or so. That is probably what made the price go down to the low 30s or so.

I'm almost sure you can't convert them to b's. I meant A's duh....

I sold two calls this morning during the brief window when the prices were high but they were cancelled. It's kind of funny how trades can be unilaterally canceled like that.