Uccmal

This is what Sanjeev is saying in the "how much cash are you holding" thread. My view? We're looking at a sideways market for a while. Pull a 20 year SPY chart. Markets never move sideways. I am guessing you mean it will top out, go down 20 or 30%, go back up to where it topped, rinse and repeat. The absolutely perfect investing climate. Just buy the same stocks over and over.

FFh is just boring these days. It still makes up 20%-25% of my holdings, down from 40% when FFh was higher, and everything else was lower. Around 14 yrs. Boring is not a bad thing. Collectively, we of this board, and its predecessor, probably wrote 100000 pages on FFH.

Too hard pile for sure. So, I stay invested and keep those durations as far out as I can, and leave my FFh position alone. I have been letting cash from dividends build in my cash free account awhile now. I was at a large work gathering two weeks ago and two guys were debating stocks, specifically Apple and Rim. The one guy had bought Apple at 600 and sold at 700. He was feeling pretty smart. I asked what he felt they might do with the cash (Apple) or how he felt about their earnings potential going forward and was met with a blank stare followed by a quick shift to talking about the price of Rim. I saved my opinion :-). Things aren't frothy yet but we could certainly see a shakeout, before a resumption upwards. I guess that is why we all hedge in our own ways.

Hi original mungerville, good to see your still around. What hedges do you use? txitxo, The shiller Cape numbers appear to be out of synch at this point in time. If you pull a chart of the largest market cap companies in the S&P 500 you find that most are in the range of 9-15 PE. There are exceptions such as Goog, and Pg, but nothing is too far out of line. To get the ratios you quote someone has to be making low profits. I contend that the smaller companies in the index have not become as pofitable as they will be in the near future. ie. Shit flows downhill. I also think the starting point on the shiller PE 10 yr. ratio, and its midpoint are skewing results enough to make it irrelevant. It could also be that the Internationalization of many companies is making the shiller PE irrelevant as well. I guess my final point on statistics is that they can be produced for any situation for any side of an equation. My own markers are telling me what fine trader mentions above. I dont see any major obstacles on the horizon right now. This is starkly different from the summer of 2007 through summer 2008 when I posted on this board's predecessor something to the effect that "waiting for the collapse is getting interminable". In 1999/2000 I sat waiting for the Nasdaq collapse (one day in 1999 MSFTs stock trading was greater than all of the TSX). There's obvious hurdles ahead but no major bubbles that need deflating that will cause greater than about a 20% correction. In the meantime, there are awesome individual deals to be had. IMHO.

120% long there abouts. Cognizant as always of the quick run up, I have sold nearly all of my 2014 BAC and AIG calls into the rally. However, These stocks are still insanely cheap. I just dont like holding durations of less than a year. It has turned against me too often. If you look at the business/stock cycle the first part is a rally in the financials. That rally has started. If the rises of the past months are any indication we may be in for the mother of bull Markets. I expect the fed will raise interest rates much sooner than anticipated, and back off any further QE. This should have a net positive effect as peoples incomes improve. Good news from California... gotta wonder how many other lower jurisdictions are getting their houses in order. Certainly not Ontario, after two decades of bad management. I am sure, at some point during the year we will get a major pullback due to some thing or other, probably Europe. Perhaps an opportunity to reload.

I have known Benett for 15 years. When I was with GE I spoke to the founder a bit, who was ultimately turfed for bribery to US muni officials Prior to that I worked in haz waste management, including an experimental soil cleaning facility. The haz waste management business makes the garbage business look like it is run by angels. Its like a free for all of theives, low end operators, and fraudsters. Benetts business operates on the principle of large, one time, heaps of soil, mostly from US municipalities. They treat it and then dispose of it as clean fill. As we know, US companies and municipalities are not exactly flush with cash for this sort of thing at the moment. And unless there is a real push to treat soil for some reason, it isn't going to be a priority. I dont know what Irwin Michael sees in BEV. Personally, I think he is in over his head. He has gone from running a value fund to supervising one of the toughest businesses to operate in. If the intention is to close and liquidate, then ABC has badly misjudged the business. My bet is the PQ gov't would freeze the cash the moment they got wind of the facility being closed. If the intention is to stay in business then there is the issue of maintaining revenues. Irwin would have been further ahead buying a couple of dozen Tim Hortons franchises with the money. Even for a value investor he gets some odd ideas.

But who knows...maybe Francis likes his own little world away from the hub-bub! Cheers! I suspect that is the case. Francis has had the fund longer than FFH has been under Prem's management. My guess is he likes it that way. Gets a little circular though. Francis owns FFh shares, which in turn are the major shareholder of his funds. Talk about eating your own cooking!

What a question (about the 100k windfall). Francis holds 60000 in Fairfax shares, outside his own funds. 100k/20m = 0.5 % of his FFh shares. His dividend from FFh will be 600,000 alone.

scc, Have a look at the financials on this one: Gencor Industries (nasdq) or Benev Capital bev-tsx and let me know. I held Gencor awhile until I realized it was never going to change. Never held Benett Env.

Zero, been meaning to get back to Breaking Bad, season 3 since last winter but too busy.

Yeah, And not like it wasn't at 355 a few weeks ago. The logic of some people escapes me.

I see bkir is at 0.14 Eu. That is a 40% unrealized gain for FFH. 0.40 * 500 M = 200 M Rimm is back close to Break even. We seem to be on an upswing.

Beerbaron, You mean, your real father was the pizza delivery boy...... The report on the study doesn't give us much to go on. Last I looked the mortaility rate for all people was 100%.

This is just an "of interest comment ". I have been listening to a classical radio station in Toronto from time to time to help train my ear. I believe the station is owned by Zoomer media, which is co-owned by FFH and Moses Znaimer. The other interesting thing is that they advertise for Zenith Insurance. I haven't caught what kind of insurance they are selling, but its worked into some sort of cross sell arrangement with Zoomer.

I am not sure I would suggest he is panicking at all. However, I think he is looking at getting prosecuted for some of the biggest insider trades ever done. This will leave him wide open for massive fines, lawsuits to follow, and substantial jail time. The billions will quickly become millions. The shark is going to rot while he is in jail rotting himself. By any measure I have ever read he is a sociopath. In that culture, even his fellow investors (employees) are going to sue his ass off if they lose money, which they will.

I added one new company in 2012 - AIG. My obsevation, looking back over my record is that the very best investments I have made were ones that I entered into slowly over a period of time. There is a long dating period before we move in together. I have probably held in the low hundreds of different companies over 15 years but only a handful have ever exceeded 10% of my total portfolio, based on purchase price. Many I have started off liking but they do something that ruins our relationship, and out the door they go. Some spectacular disasters in that group. My biggest holdings and durations: 1) FFH - 15 yrs 2) BAC - 2.5 yrs 3) AIG - < 1 yr 4) Seaspan - 5 yrs? 5) RBS Preferreds - 4 yrs 6) Canfor Pulp - 3-4 yrs 7) WFC - 2 yrs 8) JPM - 2 yrs I have other residual positions or small positions in more conservative accounts that I have had for years such as BMO, RBC, MTL-tsx; Power financial, russell metals. Still amazes me that I bought only one new company this past year.

Last year -34% This year - up 38% Net down over the last two years. This year I focused on avoiding mistakes more than anything else. The only new holding this year was AIG- tx Plan Maestro.

Yeah, your correct. I did it right in past years. Should actually be about 26%. I edited it above. I did it on the fly this morning.

1 yr : 38% 2 yr: last year -34 % leaves me below my 2011 start. CAGR 8 yrs: Edited: ~ 26% All calculated after taxes!

As recently as October to my limited recollection.

You lost me here. Whatever.

Where FFH has a controlling position I stay out. That being said I made a killing off NB and ORH but they are probably exceptions because I knew FFh wanted them back one day. KW is probably another exception, where FFh may buy it in one day, although it trades at 2x book. Put another way: I am going to let FFH do some of my investing for me.

Here's some stats for you: http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/cfp-pcaf/res-rec/comp-eng.htm I wont itemize it; you can read. It sort of says it all.

You have a pretty warped view of the US I think. His mother may or may not have committed suicide (not knowing her I have no way of knowing the answer to that), but she most certainly wouldn't have been murdered. Vigilante justice is rare even when someone is to blame for an atrocity (OJ was never murdered), it is unheard of for someone to go after a murderer's mother. Also, many Americans value our freedom above almost all else, but don't walk around in fear. Don't let a rare event skew your perception of the world. Yes there are bad neighborhoods that have been completely destroyed by the welfare state combined with the war on drugs, but in general the US is a pretty safe place to be and getting safer every year. I sure hope people on this board don't let emotions drive their investment decisions the way they drive their politics. [img http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/cdn0.virgin.com/uploads/images/story/image001-16678.jpg /img] No appeal to emotion there. I was responding to the barbarous suggestion that it was a "good thing" that a woman was murdered.... err.. forget it. No one is listening.... Yep we're all just gun touting loons killin' each other, better just stay up north where your safe. Give me a break. I have probably travelled around the US as much as you have. Rkabang, Try envisioning it like this: One of your kids, that you trained to shoot, goes on a rampage with one of your weapons and kills twenty children. How would you handle it? Do you think you could live with yourself? Now tell me that you would not have an emotional reponse. The only logical solution is to ban All guns. Its not emotional at all. Barring that, banning all multiple shot (semi etc.) weapons, and requiring full registration is the only thing that makes sense. Statistics dont bear you out either. The US has by far the largest rate of non war homicides of all developed countries on earth. Were not just talking higher rates but multiples of anywhere else.

This is turning out to be a bit anticlimatic. I am still here and I blew all my cash on women, and nose candy.