Uccmal

Was the ridiculous tornado activity during Q1 or was it Q2? The mid-west really got hammered, and presumably C&F will have a piece of that? SJ End of Feb - first quarter.

Nothing unexpected. Still makes a great downside hedge, with upside potential that could come at any time.

If that is all correct and documented then it looks bad on FFH/Pabrai. However, if Maybe FFh genuinely worked out that getting ABH shares was a better deal than selling to Mercer. Beats me how they would come to this conclusion, but what do I know. Minority investors were still given another choice and collectively they did not take it.

Pure conjecture. It could have resulted in a race to the bottom as well. If Mercer is such a white knight, where were they at the start. They seemed real quiet for an awful long time. There was nothing stopping Mercer from putting out an offer a day or week after the Lockup deal. Mercer was trying to get it as cheap as they could as well. So here you have it. FFH/Pabrai agreed to a deal with ABH. They obviously saw more value with a locked in deal with ABH than an unknown with Mercer. Minority shareholders were free to entertain any other bid. For some reason, not enough of them tendered to Mercer. I am guessing they were hoping for more from somewhere (where is a good question), or a bidding war. ABH was not biting, and neither was Mercer. So, now you have some pissed off minority shareholders, who are selling their shares for lower than the ABH bid. ABH no longer has any reason to honour the deal, so you can look forward to the share price dropping steadily. No market for the shares is exactly what would have happened had FFh and Pabrai dumped their shares. It would have taken them 600 trading days to get rid of it all. I bought fbk in 2009 at 0.35 per share. Dont tell me it couldn't retrace its steps. Canfor is still on sale today.

Hi Plan, I have held the "p"preferred shares for some time. I bought them much cheaper than today. Assumming the dividend is announced in the next couple of weeks, these should take another nice pop. I have looked in reasonable detail at RBS. I dont quite know what to make of it right now. Briefly Cons: - massive share count and government overhang (dont appear to be able to afford what AIG has been doing). i dont like share consolidations. - Ireland division is the big chain around the leg - Euroland exposure. They took a bath on their Greek bonds. They hold more in P/S. -Euro/UK - not nearly as far along as the US Pros: - Citizens bank - Ireland write downs may be slowing subject to Richie Boucher comments last week about a possible double dip. - Stephen Hester - large global footprint I figure they may be where BAC is in 1.5 years or so.

I think the main thing to take from all this, is how the regulators and Fairfax view minority shareholders rights. Or they really wanted out. Get over it. I sold out of this between last winter 011. and december. I lost money but I didn't sit around with an outsized position whining. Uccaml, Please read up. They didn't just want out. Well that was obnoxious, Alert. Of course they wanted out. They made a bad investment years ago and wanted to get out. FFh tried everything with this company. This was the best course of action at the time. I have been in and out of SFK before FFH was ever involved. Had FFh and Pabrai tried to sell these shares on the open market what would the price have been - I am betting 0.30.

I am guessing I have come close to 45 on Sydenham Hill in Dundas, Ontario. Alot of gravel trucks in the area. That one little pebble becomes central to ones focus on such a trip. :-).

I think the main thing to take from all this, is how the regulators and Fairfax view minority shareholders rights. Or they really wanted out. Get over it. I sold out of this between last winter 011. and december. I lost money but I didn't sit around with an outsized position whining. My takeaways from this: 1) dont invest in commodity companies that pay no dividend. I have held varying sizes of Canfor Pulp, since spring 09, and probably made 50% on dividends alone. BTW, its on sale now, again. The dividend will rise and fall with distributable cash, which should stabilize some as the power is bought on line. 2) Dont invest alongside FFH. Buy FFH stock directly. Dump a stock the day FFH initiates a rights offer. 3) LessthanIV is correct about anchoring. Along the way we all built a thesis about the intrinsic value of SFK. In the meantime the price of pulp tanked. Look at Mercer to a comparable example. 4) You want to play the game, prepare to be burnt. It isn't as if FFH or Pabrai made buckets of money on this one. It isn't the first time I have been burnt and it wont be the last. My circle of competence is increasing constantly, but at the same time, the number of crap companies I refuse to invest in also inceases.

Nothing like shutting the barn door years after the horses escaped, eh? I guess AA is the new triple A, A is the new double A, and so on. Kind of like revaluing a currency.

SD, your whole post was excellent. This part resonates particularly. Another Defect I need to watch for is talking myself into something that I know doesn't make sense.

I think your talking about qualitative versus quantitative investing. Twacowfca has a good suggestion. My biggest hits are mostly qualitative. I have had very limited success with deep balance sheet dives. I am very able to see the big picture in situations where I dont have an emotional investment. FFH, March of 2009, big banks 2011, AIG now. Everytime people would discuss these inevitably someone would say: "how can you invest in a P&c company, a big US bank, etc. they are black boxes". I try to deal with what I can know rather than what I cant know. I can know that these companies were trading at obscenely cheap prices by any normalized metric. I can know that regulators, employees, and managers are all working mightly to right the ship, whether its March 2009, when I bought Starbucks, AXp, GE, and WFC at multigeneration lows, or AIG now. So I read the ARs to get a gist of where a company is at and if they are walking the talk, or if there is anything grossly misleading. It has to be grossly misleading for me to catch it. By big picture, I can see in my mind what is going on for BAC, or WFC. Conversely, I cant see anything clearly in the oil or gas industry at the moment. My background is Geography, Environmental Science, and now Manufacturing, so I bring different skills to investing than most. The dngerous side is when, for some reason, I become emotionally attached to a company, such as RIM, recently. For the future I will try to avoid positions to close to home, unless I am the controlling shareholder. > 20 % cagr over 8 years.

That's awesome Ross. I am convinced that the obesity epidemic is multi-faceted in nature. A moderately balanced diet with some junk mixed in isn't going to hurt anyone who gets a reasonable amount of exercise every day or so. The body is good at self regulating to a point. Bill Bryson made a point in his book "A walk in the Woods" 1996, that it was getting difficult to walk anywhere in American cities. When I was in New York and Boston, both good walking cities, I noticed far fewer obese folk than in Atlanta, or Florida, for example. I have been jogging indoor and out for a year and this keeps my weight down and allows my food intake to be mostly what I want. I mix it up with xc skiing, and other seasonal activities. My job is not active but it is not office work either. I am out and about mostly. My real love is backpacking: cdn rockies in 2010, three smaller local trips last year, and a big trip coming up in AZ in a couple of weeks. It is not possible to not lose weight backpacking. Appalachian Trail thru hikers have the opposite problem. They cant force down enough food to keep their weight up. So, one cannot dismiss the basic calories in calories out equation so easily, regardless of what Gary Taubes claims.

I have met far too many lawyers who hate what they do. For every lawyer you hear about who gets away with obscene fees, there are a dozen who are constantly trolling to get enough money to stay in the middle class. Then there are the poor saps at all the large law firms who work mega hours for middling paychecks in what ends up equating to minimum wage. Not my cup of tea, thats for sure. Law school woild have put me into cardiac arrest.

That is vital imho. Work up a few of your good ideas to discuss but use discretion.

Hardincap, there is your answer. Bac has 12 per share of TBV and over 20 BV, once goodwill can be assumed ok. Rather than waiting for BAC to buy back shares, you can buy as many as you want at a price cheaper than BAC will ever get.

It is vitally important that they reach Basel3 as fast as they can. They want to be seen as able to withstand any shock the same as JPM or WFC, otherwise they will not get capital as cheap. JPM was able to issue long bonds at generational lows last summer.

lol, go to it Melroy. Keep in mind that these warrants were a product of Government, and they wrote them for all the banks they created the warrants for. Maybe a side by side comparison of the language would be helpful. It is interesting that whenever I google WFC tarps warrants I come back to this board. It is as if we are the only ones to really look at these in detail. If WFC is trying to buy them in quickly you may be onto something. At the very least the last holders of the warrants may be able to force upnthe price on WFC.

Arden, When I hit the contact us button I got a long form. I didn't bother with it and just used the address you had at the bottom of your post above.

oh, good grief... Do it yourself. I am satisfied with the question and the answer. Read Francis Chou's 2010 semiannual for a second opinion.

Alden, This is my E-mail and reply from Wells Fargo with my name removed: Thank you for your interest in Wells Fargo. You are correct and I would encourage you to review the prospectus supplement, link copied below, if you want to see exactly how the adjustment is calculated. http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/72971/000119312510126208/d424b5.htm Regards, Tanya Quinn Wells Fargo Investor Relations 420 Montgomery Street San Francisco, CA 94104 -----Original Message----- From: Investor Relations Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2012 9:50 AM To: Quinn, Tanya Subject: FW: Warrant - strike price adjustment -----Original Message----- From: Sent: Monday, March 19, 2012 3:57 PM To: Investor Relations Subject: Warrant - strike price adjustment I have a quick question. Is it correct that the strike price on the Wells Fargo tarp warrants adjusts downwards for any dividend amount in excess of 0.34 cents per quarter? Thanks in advance, , Wells Shareholder

maybe you guys should get into short term trading! (j/k) Oh, if only. I was looking at my records. I first held the warrants at the beginning of September 2010, 1.5 years ago. That means I was probably looking at it even earlier. Same with WFC warrants, some of which I still hold from the first purchase. I started buying call options on BAC a year ago. LessthanIV - I too wonder what became of bsilly. I met him a few times in Toronto.

Arden, Why dont you send a note or call investor relations at WFC? That should settle it. FWIW, Everytime I have thought the market had overlooked something like this it was me who was wrong.

In regards to natural gas vehicles, I think you will see other disruptive technology before you will see widespread use of natural gas vehicles. It amazes me that my IPAD can go 10 hours on a charge, and doesn't develop charging memory anymore. It is easier and many times safer, as discussed, to go with all electric, or electricity augmented with ultraefficient gasoline engines.

Good one Sanj, lol. The problem with using the S&p at the moment is that it is not a case of a rising tide raising all boats. It is a case of Apple, IBM, and MSFT raising the index, with a little help from the general market. Using the S&P for past analysis is also replete with problems. The biggest companies in the index have grown market cap based on worldwide increases in business over the last 20 years. To compare it to US GDP is not the same comparison as 20 years ago.

Peter Burke, what say you? Why do you think only the excess matters? i think it's been vetted by many people. the language is confusing. but I believe it's the excess. It is the excess above 0.34/q. if it was the total dividend the warrants would be worth $8-9 more than they are trading to account for the cumulative dividend.