rb
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Posts posted by rb
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It can be done badly so easily - Just ask the operators of Highway 407 across Toronto.
What's wrong with 407?
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Not sure, sailor of this board,
So far, I haven't read any info implying they are hole brother inlaws. - By the way, I think I really need to go bed now before this is escalading into something I don't know what!
I mean: Does it matter? Are Italian banks cheap right now or not? [For me so far: Not!].
Isn't it like 5 am in Denmark?
Cheers, Al
At this point is easier to just stay up ;D
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So are David Cheriton, Jeffrey Skoll, the late Louis B. Mayer, among many others. Don't mess with the great white north :)
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So basically the markets under performed WB's view 16 years ago since they did 6% with the help of rates going lower and margins going up a lot. But then he probably didn't anticipate a massive levering up and a financial crisis either.
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In Canada you have to use weighted average cost.
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I wonder how is 'foreign' defined -
I would say if the money wasn't made in Canada; it's foreign... even if the homeowners are residents or citizens of Canada.
Gary
It says in the article. It's foreign owned if the owners don't reside in Canada.
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Not so many after the French showed them how it's done.
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I think that the optimism may be a bit overdone. That's what? A little more than 1.2 M bbls per day? US and Canada can probably fill that in no time. And that's assuming that OPEC members won't cheat.
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Correct sir. As I've said there are other features. It always bores people when I delve into the technical details :(.
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Sure as I've said, do with him as you wish.
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extremist environmentalists
When I see this phrase, I think of this scene from Utopia.
This 2 minute scene--so beautiful in such an unusual way--was enough to persuade me to watch the entire show. :)
Brilliant scene. I may watch some myself. :)
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I predict Justin Bieber will be president in 2041
I predict you're wrong. Bieber is Canadian. But whatever. Us Canadians are just glad he moved to the US. He's your problem now. Make with him what you wish.
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More likely people from the board or some arbitrageur. Any serious player moving volume would do it on the TSX.
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I've thought about letting the Senate pick the president since we pick the Senate.
FWIW, Canada already has this system, essentially. The obvious downside for the USA is it removes one degree of checks and balances.
RE: "vote based on the leader's stated positions". It would be interesting seeing how this would work in practice, certainly better than disenfranchising all the poor people. (Why the heck don't the rich understand that if you constantly and persistently abuse all the poor people, they will shoot you. Like, dead. Is it really that hard a concept to understand? Do they really have this intense desire to replicate the French and English Revolutions? Those things don't end up well for anyone.)
It would be very nice if there were some way to this sort of "stated position" vote as an adaptive test, so each question refine which candidate best represented people's positions. I think both Republicans and Democrats would be horrified by the outcome (because their stated positions probably wouldn't actually be popular enough to win elections), but it would certainly be an interesting experiment to try. One interesting result might be that you could get, for instance, an anti-spending party aligned with progressive social values.
Of course, the biggest challenge here, like any polling, would be figuring out the questions. It's clear from numerous referendums that, when it comes to politics, politicians will deliberately chose confusing questions in cases where, with a clear question, the electorate would be likely to vote against the politicians' desires. So, there would have to be a good way to ensure that the questions actually made sense to a normal person.
Well not exactly correct. In Canada (and the UK - same system) the PM would be elected by the House, no senate. It's also a first past the post election but more correlated with the popular vote because the districts are based heavily on population numbers. There are also no-confidence votes that would trigger elections. So for example if you cannot pass a budget in Canada unlike in the US that would trigger an election. Give it to the voters to sort it out. There are other features but that's the short version.
As for checks and balances in the US. Oh Please! Darrell Issa and Jason Chaffetz are more intimate with Obama's colon than his proctologist. When it looked like Hillary was going to be elected they were preparing years of investigations. Now that Trump (a president with maybe the most conflicts of interest in history) gets elected and they're good. No need to oversee anything.
On the rich abusing the poor I think it's this way because they just can't help themselves. But I don't know, the US may just be different. If people were acting in their interest places like California, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey would be Republican strongholds and places like Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, and South Carolina would be heavily Democrat. But obviously that's not how it shakes out.
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Interesting how quickly this went the way of disenfranchising voters.
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I dont think markets do sideways for very long. I dont see anything on here that looks flat:
http://www.macrotrends.net/2324/sp-500-historical-chart-data
Thanks for the link. I really like the site.
Looking at the charts one thing is clear: It really, really sucked being an equity investor in the 1970s!
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We've learned two important lessons in the last 8 years:
#1 - Unless you're leveraged, don't try and understand macroeconomics and how it will affect your portfolio.
#2 - Stick to Ben Graham and buying with a margin of safety, regardless of what is going on around you...then sell and hold cash when the investment reaches intrinsic value.
Why?
You may get lucky with #1 at one point, but then you may look foolish for years afterwards when you do get it wrong...we've seen this with many, many value managers. #2 isn't exciting, but it works very well! Cheers!
Wise words to live by!
However, I'll indulge in a bit of macro since it's my wheelhouse. I'd say that we're not missing anything. What's happened since the election is very consistent with what you'd expect to happen in an economy that is somewhere in the neighborhood of full employment and is expecting to see a large fiscal stimulus package.
The market moves themselves haven't been that large but they've been very quick. What's also changed is a lot of the commentary. Considering the environment we're in this could be a big case of buy the headline sell the news. The markets are basically pricing up front in a stimulus package coming in. But no one knows what the package is or whether it will be a meaningful package. With these things the devil's always in the details.
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I don't have data to the opposite by that stat looks wrong. If so many condos went to speculators and investors everyone would know it. You wouldn't need to look for a source.
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There is a notion going around that costs may come down should planes be piloted from the ground. But there is still an added layer of labour in a different area, that costs just as much. And pricing power would erode with automation. They would save on per diem costs for pilots, but thats about it.
Pure and utter speculation: Buffett is prepping to buy Southwest and trying to obfuscate his interest.
I agree, alot easier to buy a diabetes drug provider.
I don't think that pilot costs are a very high percentage of the overall costs. Then all you need a couple of accidents to put a lid on that idea. Also we went down from 3-4 pilots to 2 pilots per plane and the economics of the industry didn't really change. I think if we're talking about mass transportation drones as the cure for airlines we're really grasping at straws.
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Yea, the moment BRK starts investing in space travel technology is the moment I sell my BRK stock.
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It seems like there's a lot of cherry picking on the investment side of Fairfax. I have a feeling this has a lot to do with the fact hat we really like Prem. I like Prem too. But we can't just look at the parts of the investment side that we like and ignore the others. Yes, they've done well with the bonds. But in the investment side wasn't just bond there were the equities and all the hedges too.
The fact is that on the investment side the strategy was very incoherent for a while. IS FFH a bond manager? Is it a macro shop? A while back we had the big three. What happened to the big three? A while back the hedges were warranted I would expect because the view because that the market was overvalued. Now after the market doubles (give or take) we don't need the hedges because of Donald Trump and the market is cheap? No matter what you believe about politics don't tell me that Donald Trump is a 300-400% value factor. Not to mention that the type of equity investments FFH makes are hardly tightly correlated to the S&P so the hedges are not so effective.
All this adds up to make FFH a pretty black box on the investment side. We have no clue about the investment strategy. If you ask me about BRK's investment strategy I can articulate it pretty clearly. But I can't say much about FFH strategy aside from in Prem we trust. They could turn around and do another brilliant CDS trade or another hedging debacle. But how is one supposed to price the equity in such an environment. And why should they have a multiple close to BRK when BRK outperformed them like crazy despite their size?
I think it is an identity crisis indeed and they need to figure out where they stand and explain that beyond well... Trump or Modi.
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"Also, as has been mentioned before, Fairfax has more market exposure/leverage than either Berkshire or Markel. Excluding investments in associates (which I count more as operating business and portfolio investments to be bought/sold), Fairfax has over $1,100 per share in investments per share. "
This is untrue and a quoted metric that has mislead a lot of people.
Berkshire Hathaway has roughly half of its book value invested into straight equities. And the rest of investments are good to great businesses generating very solid returns. That is real market exposure. People often quote their large cash pile but, that is peanuts relative to the size of other assets.
Fairfax is not even at half of book value invested into equities per Q3 financials and the rest of investments/businesses earn average returns.
What is it good for to have "x" amount per share in investments when "3/4 of x" amount per share in investments has to remain into cash and treasuries because insurance regulation and low rating forces them to?
I mentioned that problem way back in 2005 or 2006 relative to their structure and it is not fixed yet. They need to de-lever, increase the rating on their insurance business and corporation and find more stable sources of cash flow with solid ROIC.
Cardboard
+1. I don't understand why a business is so different if it's public as opposed to private. FFH's investment portfolio is inferior to BRK's. At this point you rely on underwriting to make lots of money. But what if underwriting weakens going forward as i believe it's likely to do? Then what?
Also you don't have 1,100 in investments per share when 430 is cash and 90 is equity hedged (i.e. Cash).
Buffett/Berkshire - general news
in Berkshire Hathaway
Posted
It's true that earnings at Mid-American are up a lot. But Berkshire also dropped a lot of capital into Mid-American.