Gregmal

Like most other sleaze balls, a lot of short sellers figured out it was easier and more profitable to just capitalize on fear and propaganda inspired panic, rather than actually letting their investment research play out. I mean its the epitome of a scheme to sit there and pitch some fundamental investment case, and then transact the same day on what is purely a non fundamental development. The Citron guy used to hammer this sort of thing all the time and I heard he got in trouble for it...."stock ABC has these fundamentals drivers" he'd shout in a loudmouthed research report. Then 3 days later he'd declare victory and it was always a good chuckle cuz we all know nothing happened other than the stock moving; largely because of him causing it to.

Again, the guy had an objective and it probably was already achieved. A 5 year old could quickly glance at what he was saying and see his objective if they had any previous familiarity with how he operates. Its magician level hand waiving. Look at this hand! he says, when what you want to be doing is paying attention to his other hand. He has a formula for this sort of smash and grab stuff, the "thesis" is just arbitrary and tangentially necessary to justify him doing it. Continuing to talk about it and analyze it just validates what is clearly nonsense. The P/B metric was necessary when operations were mediocre from 2010-2020....When you've stabilized operations and will be producing steady earnings of the magnitude that they will, you need to change the way you value the company.

I look at Prem Watsa and David Einhorn and see a case where both have done well last couple years, but only one has really learned from his mistakes of the previous decade. Einhorn still seems to do all the same dumb shit shorting tech stocks and complaining about stuff like Tesla. His fund also got so concentrated in Greenbrick that outperformance became inevitable. Watsa on the other hand stopped doing the “look how smart I am” shit and now just cashes checks for shareholders. So given the noise lately, I’d be long Watsa and short Einhorn here. Over time investors need to learn that more often than not if something doesn’t make sense to you or whatever, just move on and invest your time in better causes. Don’t sit around shorting it.

It’s always bewildered me why some folks use volatility as some sort of gotcha. It’s part of the game. If it’s compelling, take advantage and if not who cares?

Honestly if at least one thing I own isnt attracting a hit piece from some attention seeking clown at least once a year, I need to look in the mirror because chances are Im not being unique and independent enough with my work. Last thing you wanna do is be the consensus. The real money is made seeing things others dont. I'd love to make my big 3, the big 4, but I doubt this gets sold off much more than it already has.

I still think you guys are giving it too much thought because you are 1) actually familiar with the fundamentals, and 2) assuming a traditional investment approach. It is neither. This gentleman’s goal was NOT to make a fundamental case. His goal wasn’t to do “the best he could do”. His goal was to present something that would move the stock as much as possible in as short a period of time as possible. To inflict the maximum damage to the downside, as possible, on February 8/9….far different than Mr Analyst Brett, who actually does need to know some of the fundamentals in order to write his regular book reports.

This is all old news though. I’ve been pretty vocal here over the years that for the past decade, Prem seemed to be an egotistical asshole whose investments sucked and the complexity of Fairfax only made the whole situation more unappealing. However this changed around 2020-21 and go forward, what’s your fair value here if Fairfax earns $500 a share over the next 3 years?

That’s the absolute craziest thing about this whole scheme. These guys want the free lunch of taking a position right before bashing and attempting to drive down the stock on TV and social media, and then covering into the publicity effect of it all, yet they REFUSE to even stand behind the lions share of what they go so far out of their way to insinuate. Like let’s call this what this is. Some guy wants to take a position, and then go on tv or social media and move the stock in the direction he wants it to go so that he can close or substantially reduce the position profitably as soon as possible. This kind of stuff has gotten plenty of long in trouble legally.

Except the “short sellers” of this ilk scream fraud 100 times and might get a small handful, and even out of the small handful the material nature of which? Even less. Chanos literally lived off 1 call(Enron) for two decades. Ironically Chanos and others went after GE at like $5-7 a share. IBM on “accounting”. DLR, same thing. Short sellers use “accounting” as a license to literally make up anything they want. It’s like giving credit to the people whom claim they “called” all the crashes….well, if you’re calling for a crash every day…of course you’re going to have predicted them. Doesn’t mean your track record is respectable. What’s even more hilarious now, especially lately, is they deliberately insinuate up to wazoo “fraud”, but refuse to actually say it, because they don’t want to have to answer for it factually in court. See the Burford short from MW. He made it so clear that even Hellen Keller would have walked away thinking “insolvent” and “fraud”….but then like a weasel covers his ass by claiming “never said fraud” or “it is just my opinion”. Zero accountability. Although I doubt it even matters because this is also somebody who openly admits he trades against his own noise, often the same day or days around his public campaigns.

The whole “value investing is dead” rhetoric is total loser bullshit. If a company proves its ability to generate value for its owners, it will be noticed, and assuming no onerous capital structure, somebody will eventually get greedy and try to acquire it.

I kinda have a theory too that with the spread of inequality and wealth concentration there’s a FUBU element that’s much more prevalent in what I’d call tier 1 assets. Real estate, stocks, private businesses. These are things for rich people, run by rich people, and increasingly becoming scarce. There is a finite number of places to put money. Debt is largely for suckers. Think pension funds and entities that need a return but aren’t practical about maximizing it. So real assets and things of value just continue to get sucked up. Think Hamptons parcels that were owned by normal folks, then sold for cash to middle class folks, who then got cashed out by developers, that then sold to families who put it in a trust and use it one month a year…. So my loosely held belief is that over time this adds to the bid under quality stocks. More “cash/money/currency” less “place to put it”.

If they’re forced to sell anything because the stock trades back to where it was a few weeks or months ago then they’re idiots.

I honestly don’t know why this is such a big deal to people. Either way, the move is pretty immaterial and anyone who’s followed Block knows that he is somebody who at best, is very comfortable being deliberately misleading. Like the sleaze balls who sell sports betting tips claiming they have 80% win rates. And you don’t follow closely but as far as the eye can see know that number isn’t right. And when you actually see the dudes at the bar they’ll tell you off the record that the 80% number is totally cherry picked but no one will care about them if they gave you the entire picture.

Yea Block is one of the bigger offenders with that. When you hear these losers saying things like “we put our research out there so that the market can see if they agree with us”….it’s a blatant lie and the truth is that they do it because they know the market will instantly move in the direction they want it to. Has nothing to do with “their research”….that’s just the cover.

Not gonna lie, this is a much better thesis than “St Joe trades at an unwarranted premium to book value”….

Another thing that’s kind of weird is how he more or less insulates that the proper valuation here is like 3-3.5x earnings? Even if they’re over earnings it’s still like what? 5-6x normalized? Kinda bizarre.

Yea I totally respect someone like Steve Eisman and the way he goes about it, but these bullshit artists who basically do nothing but take positions and then rant and rave on social media and TV....total scumbags.

How about the bald weasel's Super Micro hit piece LMFAO?

Whats funny is a lot of what he's s saying WAS true, and the stuff I used to bitch about here all the time. What he's missing(or purposely omitting) is that these issues have largely dissipated over the past 3 years, or simply become irrelevant in their size. But I think it tells you everything when some jackass needs to "make an announcement" let alone go on TV to bash a company. Its as deliberate an attempt to move the share price as it gets. I would be shocked if he wasnt actively transacting in the stock in the coming days.

I do hope the old man comes out swinging given the history with short sellers trying to create problems here.

The reason many of these short sellers play the "accounting" angle is because most folks arent well versed in complex accounting and when they hear someone is an "expert", often just take what the "expert" says in good faith. Which gives some smash and grabber a whole lotta leeway to manufacture rhetoric.

What is “detached from reality” mean? For instance, with a 4% 10 year, to me this is equivalent to paying 25x for zero growth or inflation protection. I’d buy DEO all day at 17x or MSGE all day at 15-20x. I could justify paying 30-35x for double digit growth with a runway spanning a decade. If we re at 5% rates, that’s still 20x. So I guess that’s why I get confused at all the “expensive” talk, because it’s all relative. Some people still seem to live in a world where the overall market should trade at 15x, and I just don’t think that’s a realistic expectation.

When you look at what Ackman owns, it’s hard to conclude that he ll diverge significantly from the broader market in a bad way. If the overall market does poorly, he could do the same. During this time period though, he has proven to make great decisions either clipping the down move, or bottom ticking great businesses. Conversely, if the market does well, so will most of his holdings. So I just view it as the premier way at the moment to get market+ type alpha without having to think twice. Buybacks will work wonders over elongated periods of time. This is also something you can really crank up the allocation on during those drawdowns.

You folks need to visit Florida for a primer on both successful immigrant integration, as well as the productivity benefits of “the good kind” of immigrants. Go to Miami and talk to the Guatemalan, Cuban, Venezuelan immigrants. Then ask them what they think of the folks coming over the border from Mexico.

Don’t think it matters. Ackman is one who reliably outperforms and occasionally does something heroic. If there was no ego and no stock buyback; I probably wouldn’t own this. But take those two things and give it 5-10 years…you’re gonna make a fortune.