Santayana

Lol, some random guy on a random website makes claims that there is no other evidence for, and people should take it seriously.

A few big cities in the US have rent control, but for the most part there is no legal limit to rent increases anywhere in the US. It's whatever the market will bear. My town has seen rental rates for single family homes almost double in past 4-5 years.

I agree with this. But you're not trying to argue it both ways and say that poverty doesn't exist on the bottom of the scale.

I don't understand how someone can claim that it's no problem to live in NYC on $40K and poverty doesn't really exist except by choice, but that making 10x that much isn't "wealthy".

A lot of Fairfax JOE Nintendo CNQ About 15 other names that add up to about 5%.

39% this year, 56% for the past 2. The majority of that is due to Fairfax, and luckily I didn't have any real stinkers to bring the returns down.

When did you first purchase Fairfax, and have you added to the position over time?

I just renewed a policy for my small business, and Chubb was able to quote me a rate about 35% less than The Hartford was asking. The Hartford quote was a 10% increase on what they charged last year.

You'll never win being overly defensive, but I have no problem hedging a bit with puts. The primary reason being that it protects me from myself hitting the panic button when some volatility inevitably shows up.

ORH calls in 2009. It seemed like everyone knew the purchase of the remaining shares was imminent, but $35 calls were only a few bucks and it happened at $60.

Between the over representation of the mega-caps, and the advent of index ETFs, I'm not sure much historical data about the major indexes is really relevant anymore.

At lower-mid ELOs the winner is the person that makes the second to last blunder.

It's a gift to those that are still accumulating a position to have it trading where it is now. My belief regarding all of the relative inattention from the analysts and markets is simply that Fairfax isn't trading on a major US exchange. It's some some random P&C insurer in Canada, who cares?

I'm not sure which statistic is my favorite. The fact that BV is up ~38% over the last 7 quarters, or that 2023 Q3 earnings were a bit higher than the first 3 quarters of 2022 combined.

Aug 24 Joe Calls

This is the line that cracks me up. "Fairfax will continue to post poor results and could destroy significant value if Watsa's investment thesis doesn't pan out."

What did you buy? I just noticed there's some longer dated stuff than the last time I had looked.

I wouldn't bother trying to understand short term moves in Fairfax stock. But maybe just some profit taking after hitting ATHs on Friday?

If you don't hold it, you can't sell it

It's easy to point at the shorts and deflation swaps, and say wow Fairfax really was screwing up back then. But if you could go back in time and have them not do those things, but also not make all the acquisitions they made during those years, would you prefer that vs. where they are now?

There have been quant managers active in Canada for over 20 years.

Fairfax and JOE even though I'm overweight in both.

I agree with much of what you're saying, but regardless of whether or not it's been caused by government, inflation has been real for most people for quite some time, much more so than what the CPI says. What does Natty Light have to do with the price of beer?

Right, but doubling in 10 years is far in excess of both the target, and what the CPI tells us the "actual" inflation is. Then we have the so called hedonic adjustments which try to wave away price increases as being a result of improved quality. Do you know anyone who actually thinks the quality of most of the goods we buy has actually been increasing for the past few decades?

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