maxthetrade

Can get it for €60 over here, will definitely give it a try!

A good friend of mine is a Bourbon fan, so I bought him a bottle of Blantons for his 50th birthday two years ago, I paid ~100 €. Today the best offer I could find is at €148.

Just had a Sherry 'Tradición Pedro Ximénez »V.O.S. 20 Años' for the first time. Very sweet with subtle notes of Walnut and dried fruits. Excellent with cheese, deserts or poured over walnut icecream.

Don't know if that was a macro bet, interest rates were so low that the opportunity cost of sitting on a pile of cash was pretty low and the risk of losses from owning bonds pretty high. Hard to tell how much money they'll make from this, depends on how high interest rates go and when they decide to move. At this price it's just gravy, the downside is pretty well protected and upside will take care of itself. BTW, the transcript of the call is now availble on SA: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4505284-fairfax-financial-holdings-limiteds-frfhf-ceo-prem-watsa-on-q1-2022-results-earnings-call

Exactly! You guys really think that the US would risk total nuclear war to protect some east European country? No way. The key player is China, the've probably told Putin that they don't care about Ukraine but that nukes are off limit if Russia wants their support.

I agree, hard to see how Europe can avoid a recession. My heating gas bill went from 1.6k to 6.8k/year. I was able to drop it to 4.9k by switching my gas provider which most people here don't do. Electricity bill doubled to 1.6k. Filling the tank costs 25% more. Cost of groceries is up by 10-20%, e.g. I used to pay €15 for 1kg of red shrimp, now 20€. Only japanese Wagyu and french artisane cheese aren't more expensive, probably because they were ridiculously expensive already P.S. if things get crazy later this year, e.g. rationing of gas etc. I may move for some time to a nice place in the south or the US. Most people can't of course.

ad 1. very possible ad 2. I doubt it

What do you consider a 'normal size position'? I'm still way overweight @ 25%. In some smaller accounts up to a 50% weighting. Some things I've done recently: selling KMX and MMM naked puts,. Selling ATCO calls and buying common shares yesterday.

That's it and a high quality triple sec like Cointreau!

You basically need a camera, optics and an equatorial mount to compensate the rotation of the earth and if using longer focal length and/or a lower quality mount a guide scope and guiding camera. With today's DSLR's it's possible to get some decent results, cooled slow scan CCD or CMOS cameras will give much better results though because of higher quantum efficiency, lower dark current and readout noise etc. There are very high end cameras like EMCCD's available too, they are quite expensive but allow extremly short exposure 'lucky imaging', a technique that allows to essentialy freeze the atmospheric turbulence and to use only those select frames with the highest resolution. In this case you don't even need a high quality mount. There is a very wide range of optics available for astro imaging, from a well corrected telephoto lens to telescopes in the 1m+ class. For bigger aperturtes and for longer focal length you need a very precise (and hence more expensive) mount. Don't skimp on the mount! A well corrected APO refractor like the 4" Takahashi FSQ is a good choice for beginners. Very easy to handle and very well built. Reflectors are much cheaper but require some knowledge about collimation, they are the only choice if you want a big aperture and longer focal length. Refractors are prohibitively expensive at larger apertures. A good mount is crucial if you want to obtain great results unless you're using a very short focal length or you're doing lucky imaging. For smaller apertures and short to medium focal lengths (up to ~1000mm) a cheap chinese mount like the EQ-6 will work reasonably well. If you want to do some serious work I'd recommend an Astro-Physics, Paramount, 10 micron or something similar. A good book to start is Ron Wodaski's book about CCD imaging: http://www.newastro.com/book_new/default_new2.html Another good resource is https://www.cloudynights.com/index I already mentioned Adam Block at https://www.adamblockstudios.com/ Very nice guy with a lot of experience. Depending where you live in the US I may be able to get you in contact with some local astrophotographers if you are interested.

Yes I did take those. I took those from a rather light polluted suburban location just above zero with a corrected (Wynne corrector) 12.5" Newton which I built myself, carbon aramid honeycomb sandwich tube, 12.5 f/4 parabolic mirror with a SBig ST10ME and a SBig STL11000 on an Astro Physics 1200 GTO mount. I also built a 24" f/f4 Dobson for visual use. It's a very rewarding hobby if you're interested in science. I have a friend who was an instrument specialist for the ESO La Palma spectrograph, I'll never forget the skies at this location, the winter milkyway looked like a 4 lane Autobahn Omega Centauri was breathtaking compared to M13 even though it was just above the horizon. We took an image with an amateur 12.5" that showed objects not identified on an image taken with the 8m+ Subaru telescope! I you're interested in astronomy I highly recommend to visit some premier location in the US. Since you're in the US I recommend the Kitt Peak Outreadge program. If interested you may want to contact Adam Block at https://www.adamblockstudios.com/, super nice terrific guy! You can see some of my images here: https://ccdware.com/ccdstack_image_gallery/

A couple of years ago I was into astro imaging, part science part art. I really enjoyed it but unfortunately Germany isn't a very good location for this hobby.

A fine cigar now an then is great! I've restricted myself to 1-2 a year too. I'll give the Especial No.1 a try! Speaking of Montecristo's, I'lll never forget the Double Corona's I had with a couple of friends on the day of my colloquium. The Romeo y Julieta Churchill is great as well.

Probably makes more sense to look at real rates.

Great discussion. I very much agree with petec, it's not that Fairfax changed their investing style, they are simply now at the sweet spot of a commodity cycle. I hope they don't screw it by overstaying.

I agree, Fairfax looks pretty attractive at these prices and as you pointed out they are well positioned. I've thought about increasing my position but it's already huge.

Berkley posted another fantastic quarter, should bode well for Fairfax: -Net premiums written increased 26.6%. -The current accident year combined ratio before catastrophe losses of 2.2 loss ratio points was 86.0%. -The reported combined ratio was 88.2%, including catastrophe losses of $48.5 million. -Average rate increases excluding workers' compensation were approximately 9.3%. Robust premium growth was driven by continued strong rate increases in nearly all lines of business combined with higher exposure growth. Record underwriting income in the quarter reflected year-over-year margin improvement and a further reduction in the expense ratio. We anticipate that the factors fueling the Company’s growth should remain in place for the foreseeable future and that compounding rate increases in excess of loss trend will further contribute to underwriting profits as premiums are fully earned.

That reminds me of that Hussman guy, I used to read his comments a couple of years ago, he always made a compelling case for a big correction. If I recall correctly his stock picks weren't bad at all but he had hedged away all gains. I just looked at his funds performance, what a desaster! He's the perfect example why it's not a good idea to base investment decisions on such models.

Sure but it's still fun to estimate future market returns and more than an interesting excercise for people who invest in index funds. Of course no one knows the future, so it's best to think about future returns in terms of a probability distribution.

Yeah I remember that article very well! You are probably right that returns will be worse considering record profit margins, ultra low interest rates and beginning valuations. Fortunately that doesn't matter too much for small scale stock pickers.

What will returns over the next 20 years be? Considering today's valuations probably pretty similar to the returns over the last 20 years or even worse if interest rates are much higher at the endpoint. Isn't that an amazing chart? Who would have thought in 2000 that the Dow, S&P and the Nasdaq would have performed equally well after 20 years (excluding dividends)? Today reminds me a lot of 2000, crazy speculation in some parts of the market and reasonable valuations in other parts. Fortunately this valuation divergence is again the basis for future outperformance.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Sold some Jan 23 BRKB $370 and $430 calls

Not directly related to business but a good example how AI will change how science will be conducted in the future: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/exominer-neural-network-kepler-exoplanet-discovery/

What do you consider as an overweight position, 10%, 20%, 30%? After selling DLTR I'm thinking about buying more FFH and the maximum exposure I'd like to have. I'm pretty comfortable with 20% at this price but probably won't go above 30% even if it gets cheaper.