Uccmal

I see now. Always becomes about food with some people. :'(

I also saw some guy riding his bike with a mattress on his head- i kid you not, I cant make this shit up! More comfortable than a sleeping bag, I guess. If I were from Edmonton I would be thinking about moving: http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/city/pages/ab-71_metric_e.html

Yeah, and we can go outside in the summer during the day.... And we already have troops in Afganistan... And we have good banks... And we have water... And we have less snow than Buffalo... by a long shot And we have Walmart, Home Depot, Macdonald's and Coca Cola, and Pepsi too. No Tiger Woods though. We need a Tiger Woods. I guess everyone would move here if we had a Tiger Woods. Good thing I can type fast.

valuecfa, I am guessing that you are not from Minnesota, Chicago, Buffalo, Rochester, Cleveland, Detroit, or a New England State...... We have beautiful summers up here... sometimes. :-\

When Oil ran up to above 120 I purchased some Horizons Betapro HOD units on the TSX. These are inversely double leveraged to the price of Nymex Crude. I ultimately made alot of money on the units as oil went up to 150 and then back down to 80 or 90 where I sold. ....But nowhere near what I should have made. I was out probably 50% of my arithmatic gains due to the drag these units have by constantly readjusting the basket of holdings. All of them behave the same. Their daily tracking is quite close but long term you will ultimately end up with less than your investment. I use S&P puts - medium term to hedge any downward positions. As Ericopoly mentions on another post, should they expire you take the tax loss and apply it against your gains. It works in Canada tax wise, check for the US. Zorro, I have hedged some of my holdings FFH/GE/HD leaps with June 2010 S&P puts that are at the money right now. Should the market rise I will add more.

Cardboard, Not to be facetious. If it is such as bad business then why are some of the very best investors using float - Buffett, Markel come to mind? Each time Buffett takes over an insurance company it goes in the dumper for years until He and Mr. Jain clean up its underwriting practice. But he persists in buying up float. With FFH, I contend that the amount of business being written when the 25% of the time hits will more than make up for the down time since 2003.

Viking, I am not convinced that it takes a disaster to bring about a hard market. I think it is more likely the cumulative effect of bad underwriting that will come home to roost at a whole lot of companies all at once. A disaster certainly would speed things up though and create a buying opportunity of a lifetime in Fairfax (again :P). Suddenly at some point the collective group will start to report really bad results in a benign environment. With no yields to offset it it could be very signficant. A couple of hundred million each across 30 companies adds up to a disaster of epic proportions.

The Canadian Banks were better buys in March. The US and Canada are not comparable on a banking basis. In Canada there are 5 large banks, a handful of regionals and international entrants, and a handful of mortgage companies. The big Canadian Banks which is what I think we are talking about here are BMO, RY, CM, TD, and BNS. They operate as a oligopoly. There are large amounts of government protection in place for these entities. Each of them offers the same cross section of services at the same rates: - mortages - savings and loan - credit cards - store fronts This means there is little competition. For example I have had an account at CM since I was 5 years old. When I was 22 I got a Visa from TD. I use TD as my discount broker. My mortage is from a non-bank lender but I am not normal in that regard. Most Canadians do all of their banking at one of the big 5. The Canadian cities I am most familiar with (Greater Toronto Area - this makes up 20% of Canada's population, and Calgary) had some speculative building but much of it was just filling pent up demand following the decade long recession in the 1990s. I bought my house in 2004 just as prices were starting to rise. From bottom to top has probably been a gain of 50% over 6 years. Prior to that prices had not changed for 15 years. Contrast this to San Diego which was in speculative fervor in 1998 that continued for 8 more years. The banks here are much safer RIGHT NOW than their international peers. This wasn't always so and may not remain the case. But at the moment....

Apologies to US board members but I am now thinking this is a good move. NYSEs handling of the whole affair has been dismal. They forgot who the customer was. So they lose a rapidly growing company with 8 billion market cap. If Thursday and Friday this week are any indication the trade volumes going forward are going to be very low 20 -30 k per day maximum. This may create a desirability situation. It would be really nice to get the hand of this company of the likes of this board's members into the hands of someone willing to pay more for the stock. I am thinking the NYSE listing has been a drag on the stock price. This drag may disappear now. We shall see. A few months should bear out whether my hypothesis is correct, or not. It also removes the effect of the currency fluctuations on the stock price which lately have been indecipherable from the actual stock movement.

I held Kingsway for years up until just before the fall. To sum up: - their business is auto insurance for high risk drivers - primarily. - short tail business - most claims appear within a year or two - Serial acquirers - One large US sub - Lincoln General - was costing them hundreds of millions of dollars per year in reserve increases. - this got worse and worse into the Spring of 2008 when I sold out. They kept promising it would get better but it never did. They use outside underwriters - MGAs - giving away the pen. - Unlike Fairfax/BRk they have an average investment record - 1-3% on bonds' - average returns (mutual fund average) on stocks. The book value has imploded and the turnaround has become daunting. Rather than cut back on underwriting during soft market they kept writing at bad rates to keep money coming in the door to pay off past mistakes. Kingsway shows how bad it can get with insurance without an actual bankruptsy. Good management and a hard market and some investment savvy would set it right but that's alot of ifs. In a time when I can buy FFH below book, Sunlife at book, MFC at 1.2 x book etc., PWF at multi-year lows, why would I waste money on a turnaround that may take years?

Shah, some interesting comments. Buffett has never liked gold but then Buffett can run a business like no one else on earth so why would he buy gold. He bought Sees, Buffalo News, and WPO instead of gold during the last run up. This time he is buying railroads and preferred shares.

I don't see any such consensus.. the bubble story is the devaluation of the US Buck and competitive devaluation of other currencies. Those who expect the price of gold to crash are playing the opposite trade... a sustainably stronger US dollar. This is quite unlikely as each day other countries seek to diversify their foreign exchange holdings. Russia just announced its intention to diversify to the Loonie (of all things) and continues to buy its own gold production. India made another purchase of gold from the IMF and Vietnam has added to its gold stash in order to prop up the Dong (no Viagra sold there). Central banks, ETFs and hedge funds throughout the world are now net buyers of gold..if this is a bubble, it is in its very early stages, as is the collapse of the US buck. Brox, you just agreed with me. On this board we, including you, seem to have some consensus that gold is going up. For what its worth. It's going up relative to something else same as anything else does. Still not an investor. I will find it easier to short it when its gets scary high in a year or two.

Since we have some consensus that gold is going up from here into bubble territory why not buy gold, ride it up, and sell. With the situation in Dubia and possible spinoffs gold's rise may be meteoric from here. Notice the words: consensus, may be, etc. I wont be trying this.

Interesting commentary from Prem Watsa: http://www.financialpost.com/executive/story.html?id=2258326 He seems to have another convert...

I would think 'or what' is more appropriate. There were only 90,000 shares short as of Oct. 30. Up in US dollars, down in Canadian. More like a currency play.

Agree. The dividend should be quarterly and should be raised to roughly 4% of the book value of the stock. I think we will see the increase. I wonder how many people buy this stock for the annual dividend. I know I will be converting a batch of options to catch it. This may partially explain the rising stock at year end. That is why it should be made quarterly. Interesting comments Cardboard. RE: splitting the stock. In this day and age you can always buy 1 share. I have never been charged extra. Its just that you need a huge gain on that share to make up your fees. But that is a problem faced by investors with small amounts of money in general. My cost per share has dropped down to pennies or less in many cases.

To add to the above. This past year, I have added FFh to all of my RSP accounts and my kids Education accounts. These accounts are tax free which means that I cant take tax losses. I would not have done this prior to the CDS bonanza. I actually used to have NB in there because it was a safer company. I no longer feel that way.

What a thread... Cardboard, Crip, I agree that US investors wont hear about the company but I am not sure that's relevant any more. Fairfax has been in the news in Canada at least once a week financing this or that or buying this or that. They are getting large enough to attract large institutional investors. The recent rebalancing of the S&P/TSX is what raised the price above the IPO. I actually think they might benefit from being the biggest fish in a small pond. If your mandate requires you to hold a P&C company, who's it going to be in Canada? The recent IPO also showed the thirst for high quality Canadian companies that haven't been hammered down. Raising 1 billion in Canada is no easy feat, without underwriting, no less. I for one am looking forward to the 12 $ per share dividend this year.

http://cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/index.php?topic=1481.0

I am not thinking their future is going to lie in the PC to consumer business. They do have a large presence in the business market if they can hold onto that. As an aside I bought a Compaq laptop last night for 500 Cdn with Wind 7 installed etc. - The purchase was for my nearly 6 year old son - The fact that it was Compaq meant nothing to me whatsoever. About 13 years ago I was in a GE Capital operation where they were assembling Dells, Compaqs, and IBM PCs side by side for retail. Obviously this business is now in China but I expect the same thing applies. I let FFH hold this stock for me. I am we will do well down during the next upgrade cycle.

You know, I could imagine that FFH is real fed up with NYSE for not stepping forward during the short attacks. The NYSE did absolutely nothing to help out back then. The aggregate savings between all the various companies must be pretty big as indicated. I am wondering if Prem has been talking with the Power Corp guys? My biggest hope is that this is not a precursor to going private.

Well I spoke to my broker - TD Waterhouse. I am told that "normally" when a company is delisted the CBOE will adjust the options accordingly, which in this case means they will likely be tied to the underlying Canadian stock and adjusted to accomodate exchange rates etc. The CBOE will make an announcement at some time on their web site as to what they will do. Please do not take this as gospel as I am dealing with a discount broker not the full service variety. If anyone hear's other news please post. Cheers, A.

I agree... it sucks. Anyway, I have been looking into options/leaps handling. There are a couple of possibilities: 1) Someone will start an ADR on NYSE and the Leaps will continue to be assigned to this. An example if RBS - plc. You can buy American options on the ADR. I think this is unlikely for FFH since it is simply too illiquid. 2) Existing options will be honoured to the TSX listed security with appropriate currency conversions. No more will be written 3) The exchange (presumably the CBOE) will settle the options and close the position. I most hope for number 2 since I have over 20 Jan 2011 Leaps and was expecting FFh to go up by quite a bit before then. I cannot afford to convert them all to stock. Anyway, I will be calling my borker tomorrow. A.

Looking at his picture I am going to guess that he sells white shirts or ties...

I panicked and sold all my Fairfax. >:(