KFRCanuk

I agree. Although, I'm not affected. I wonder if they will ever explain why. I have a work related problem with one of our largest suppliers websites. Trying to get in contact with the person that is responsible(and can help me) for the particular flash application is tough. It can be a hard these days. I truly hope that you are able to exchange your ffh.nyse for ffh.u.tsx or someone will point you to the FFH expert at TD Ameritrade.

I was thinking of Micheal Clayton/uNorth.

Sorry about the dual post. http://www.reuters.com/article/americasRegulatoryNews/idUSN2342166220091123 " NEW YORK/BOSTON, Nov 23 (Reuters) - When Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd (FFH.TO) sued a group of hedge funds in 2006 claiming they conspired to drive down the price of the company's shares, many viewed the litigation as a cynical attempt by the Canadian insurer to silence its critics. Some skeptics predicted the lawsuit filed with a New Jersey state court would be quickly dismissed and forgotten. But three years later, the lawsuit against Steven Cohen's SAC Capital Advisors, James Chanos' Kynikos Associates and others is going strong and creating headaches for two of the best-known U.S. hedge fund managers."

http://www.reuters.com/article/americasRegulatoryNews/idUSN2342166220091123 "wynn, meanwhile, died of natural causes earlier this year -- before Fairfax's attorneys could interview him." I either forgot about this OR didn't hear about it. Does anyone have a link to the obituary?

TD Waterhouse does support purchasing US securities in your Canadian Self Directed RSP. The transaction costs can be high since they charge you USD/CDN exchange and I think a conversion charge too. When you go and sell a US security, they will convert the security back to CDN. If you place the trade over the phone, they can hold the USD in some type of instrument(USD bond or something) until you find something else to buy. Your best bet is to contact them and get them to confirm the process as I have not sold any USD stock that I have bought.

Wow... Does this mean no more 13-f? I'm sad about that. I wonder if they will be able to quantify the $ savings from this. I'd imagine all the fillings, accounting, NYSE listing fee's, SOX compliance probably add up to a lot of money. Without knowing anything about these costs. I bet the savings will be several million a year.

How much did they make on methanex?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/business/31charts.html?_r=4&ref=business "A new rule of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which took effect in July, has made it virtually impossible for anyone to sell Motors Liquidation shares short, and is forcing those who had short positions to close them out."

http://seekingalpha.com/article/170221-fairfax-financial-holdings-limited-q3-2009-earnings-call-transcript?source=yahoo&page=1 This was my favorite ;) Rich Derov Just curious, what really keeps you up at night in terms of Fairfax? Who do you think the biggest drivers out there going forward? Prem Watsa Well, one of the – we keep a very strong financial position and we’ve always done this, but yes, you will – you might ask why we’ve hedged the 25% on our equity positions. As Greg has mentioned to you, the stock markets have appreciated significantly since March. But we do testings like a 50% drop in the stock market happening at the same time as a one in 250-year event, a catastrophe event at the same time. And that means like a big Category Five storm in Miami or a big earthquake in Los Angeles or San Francisco. So we test our financial position and our cash positions in the holding company for those types of scenarios and so – so that’s a constant testing. We’ve considered Fairfax to be as our head office is always looking at worst-case events, making sure we can survive them. But after that, I must tell you, I sleep soundly.

After so many years of runoff costing us money, what's your best guestimate of runoff income?

Earnings release, close of market on October 30, 2009 Earnings conference call, October 30, 2009

The Pakit FAQ http://www.pakitinc.com/index.730---3.html I found this interesting: Q: How quickly can I get a new machine? A: The current lead time from order date to commissioning is 7 months. Q: How quickly can I get new tooling? A: New tooling has a 4 week lead time, and replacement tools have a 2 week lead time. Granted the machine seems rather large but 7 months to get one after the order! The technology seems interesting. Maybe they had some orders on the books and needed to expand their production capability. That would make the financing decision easy i think. Watch out Winpak?

I never tendered my Northbridge electronic shares. At some point, the shares were exchanged for cash in my account. I'm not sure what happens with certificates.

Ha! Apparently google can't be trusted!

If google finance can be trusted, there seems to be some large 10K-80K trades today on the TSE. So far, 595,700 have traded hands today and the stock is currently at $405.97CAD. It reminds me of the $57 days. Where millions of shares were traded BUT with price decline. I wonder whom is unloading? It's not me, I don't come close to 1K shares. Oh yea... 1700 shares have been traded on the NYSE today.

So far it' up $21 today. Seriously, it seems that the equity offering last week set the floor or maybe i'm getting confused between the US and Canadian stock prices.

60 Minutes has a story about Credit Default Swaps. What I found the most interesting was that US Congress passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in 2000 most likely not knowing what the potential impact could be. Anyway you can watch the video here: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5274961n&tag=contentMain;contentBody

I have never lived through inflation as a consumer. I would expect inflation to hit on my personal loans first. For those whom have lived through inflation, do you remember how long it took for employers to increase salaries in times of high inflation? Also, if you believe that inflation is coming, did you push out your mortgage term to 10 years?

Torstar released their quarterly results this week. http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Torstar-Corporation-TSX-TS.B-1023164.html http://www.google.com/finance?q=TSE%3ATS.B I believe Fairfax had a 18% ownership of the company. Where can I find out if they are still holding? Maybe I can ride on the coattails!

I get the feeling that over the long term, ORH is going to get gobbled up by FFH. Just like the Northbridge deal http://www.fairfax.ca/Assets/Downloads/Press/fpr2008-12-01.pdf, maybe you can expect a 30% premium based on the closing price before the offer. I wish I had trading account that did not gouge me when buying USD's. Whether FFH buys ORH or not, I'd still get paid.

Really? I'm an apple fanboy but never bought the stock. What's your thesis on it?

63% FFH 10% SNS 6% Cash I consider my FFH position as cash. Although I have not SOLD any of FFH in 5+ years.

As a company with 500 employees, we have standardized on OpenOffice. We have 100 PC's and the rest run on SUN Ray terminals. SUN Ray terminals allows users to share a computer (server). You have a keyboard, mouse, screen and instead of a computer you have a SUN Ray desktop unit. You can pretty much present any Operating System Desktop. In our case, we are presenting our users with an opensoalris.org desktop (also free). Right now, I'm getting 100 users onto a $12,000CDN server. It's worked out really well. We have a total of 3 IT people. The Old company I worked for had 500 employees, all running Windows laptops/Desktop. It took a staff of 6 IT people to run the company. here are some sunray video's: Oh yea, just to steer this reply further into the ditch. We tend to use opensource software first. That lets us understand the feature set we need. After that, we may switch the applications to non free software.

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20090630006025&newsLang=en "Canwest Agrees to Sell Two Conventional Television Stations to Channel Zero" The story still keeps going... Must be some real late nights at portage and main.

I think the solution is clear. Buy a house in detroit, put it on a barge, float it to bc via the panama canal. Keep the land for a future sale. ;)