thowed

I will stand by the old attributed Mark Twain quote on miners. Either Bullion or Royalties, though arguably the two best: FNC & WPM are too big to grow much now, and the rest I struggle with.

Thanks! Good feature.

SHVA

Amazing! Can I ask what the source of the photo is?

Sorry - never pleasant to get messages like this, even when it's from obvious dipsh1ts.

Yep, reminds me of that old Yogi Berra line about in theory and in practice... There are some decent Indian Funds for offshore investors that have outperformed NSE & FIH, and while I am a happy FFH holder, & the airport looks great, I just struggle to see how this will play out. It may do suddenly, but I don't have the same conviction in it as the parent.

Good stuff - totally agree. Technology is a tool, and it feels like increasingly it's being misused.

I don't know much, but think can say with reasonable confidence that technically Chubb is ACE - ACE bought Chubb in 2016, but reasonably adopted the better-known brand name. I have just been starting to look at Arch (following a recent thread here) which on first view looks as good if not better, so it's good to have a vote of confidence for the sector.

BLDR and Nintendo.

Thanks, @gfp. Sorry to ask a stupid question, but I'm confused as to why some of the shares purchases are at a much lower price e.g. 11-19 March. Are they occasionally buying the US$ OTC FRFHF?? These are much lower amounts.

I suspect what Xerxes is suggesting is that in 2024 there is a much broader option of companies (e.g. Tech) compared with mid-1990s. Personally I think there is much to like about Fairfax, but I'm not going to spend more time trying to compare it to 90s Berkshire. Cheers!

Many thanks @longterminvestor, this is really helpful.

Crazy. Well, it's had a good run. As @longlake95 says, I trust in blue-chips like ODFL and TFII over time, and think a continued downturn is an opportunity to keep drip-buying in preparation for next cycle when they come back stronger.

Truck-load arguably canaries in coal mine for recession? People getting out? OR Great companies valued thusly, and valuation just reasonably de-rating a little? n.b. I haven't read the ODFl call yet. Great, well-managed companies - I am attempting to dribble in to ODFL on a day like today.

I beg to differ - I remember you posting about buying BSM and DMLP in 2020, which was pretty great timing. Am very grateful, as it got me looking into them (I timed it less well, but acceptably), and I now have decent DMLP position (I couldn't get as comfortable with BSM management-wise & don't understand gas as well). Sorry to go off-thread.

I'm not a US investor, but I think they stiff you in ADR fees, especially on the dividend (something on it in the Nintendo thread I think). I sold it, and bought back in Yen (easy to do on IBRKR). I know some Macro bros on Twitter are saying Yen about to strengthen, but a) I don't listen to Macro bros, b) I don't know what it would mean anyway, though perhaps makes Margin less attractive, if it happens.

MSCI Seems an overreaction to the results, Fernandez seems decent, & think should do OK long-term (it's a not unknown brand, right?), though not exactly 'cheap'.

If you're not invested, I think they might float around on the internet. reddit has a valueinvesting thing I think that has a good selection of quarterly letters.

Thanks @petec, I am relatively new to Fairfax, and am excited for the future, but agree that it's good to have a balanced view on things (or just that we should always keep trying to 'kill' our favourite investments?). On the other hand, I suppose my other question would be - what does one replace Fairfax with? I struggle to find assets of such quality that are any cheaper? But of course always interested in ideas to look at. A tiny bit of scuttlebutt for Eurobank & Greece: I was talking to some Greeks recently, and things are certainly booming there, and of course they started from a low point in 2011. However the smart view seemed to be that things were already starting to get out of hand, as they do, particularly with the property market, and so while things always last longer than one expects, there is the feeling that at some point things will turn from boom to bust.

Thanks @Jaygo. Yes, I read the Plural presentation, very thorough, and one of the podcasts. There were some other good write-ups last year too if anyone's interested like this: https://www.fairwayresearch.com/p/terravest-industries And our dear Packer also covered it in one of his letters.

Interesting. I only had a quick look, but instinctively feel that companies like this don't tend to work. I keep looking, but always end up with bullion ETFs instead. Given the size, I imagine he may get a decent boost from others following. I may well be wrong - good luck!

As someone 'across the pond' in the UK, I'm very grateful to all of you, esp. @dr.malone for these detailed notes & presentations. Don't suppose any of you guys were the ones who presented Terravest? That and FFH have been my main purchases in the last 12 months.

@Vish_ram I think you misunderstand - I'm not predicting a downfall for US. I'm just saying that there was a 12-year period where the S&P500 was at the same level at the start and end, and so this 'could' happen again. And if it did, what might companies/sectors do better than the index? I find it interesting, because so few mutual funds have been able to beat the S&P500 in the past 15 years, so would that also be the case in the previous 15 years, and how would one overcome that. It's about trying to do research for different outcomes, just in case. I am agnostic. The US market feels hard to beat right now, as @rohitc99 says. I was just thinking about how many big Tech/TMT cos there were in Europe in 1999 (Nokia, Ericsson, Vodafone etc.) and how now ASML feels like an outlier. Amazing how that's happened in just 25 years. I think Asia did fantastically in 2000-12, though I suspect that was at least partly because you were starting from the aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis, so prices were pretty low. And things have pretty much stalled there since 2013, apart from I think India and Vietnam. China obviously has been boom & bust. Incidentally, I found some old Fund Commentaries from 2010-12 earlier while having a clear-out, and reading them felt like reading something from a different century. It would be hard to begin to imagine what things are like back then. So this reminded me that 2036 will probably be nothing like we can imagine now. But I hope that one thing that won't change is that a basket of good quality companies bought at reasonable prices will still perform OK.

There's a near generation who've worked since 2009 & are used to 'stocks only going up'. But older people (or people who know their history) know that the S&P topped in 2000 and didn't make a new high until 2012 (apart from maybe a moment in 2007). So 12-year returns were FLAT excluding Dividends. And this perhaps belies the increasing feeling that most people should index. So IF this were to happen again (e.g. if things got really crazy with Crypto etc. again in the next 12/24m), I was trying to think what stocks did well in that period, as I wasn't paying much attention then. Of course, one of the main problems is that so many successful companies in 2024 didn't exist/weren't listed in 2000. Forget all the Tech (Alphabet/Facebook) but even V/MA. But I thought it might be a useful exercise to imagine. You can also slightly divide them in two i.e. those that followed the index in 2000-09, and then shot up after 2009, and the ones that sailed through 2000-03. Here are some I've come up with so far, but any others much appreciated. Unsurprisingly, Berkshire sailed through this period, returning c.100% Financials; also unsurprisingly generally did so well in 2000-08, that even with their massive crash in 08-09, followed by the bail-out meant they did pretty well. For instance Ratings: SPGI, MCO, and good insurance. Healthcare: haven't looked in detail, but classic quality like NOVO, TMO did very well. Consumer: So these are interesting, as they'd suffered in the late 90s against tech, and then came really good, at least partly helped by reducing interest rates. Could this happen again? Property: I guess this is like Financials i.e. did so well to '08, then got bailed out. Incidentally Tech: interesting to see MSFT vs CISCO vs AMZN. MSFT: pretty much followed the S&P so flat over 12 years. CISCO: tanked 75% in 2000-01, and barely recovered in next decade, down c.60% over 12 years. AMZN: insanely volatile, particuarly in the 2000-01 downturn, and 2007-08, then went up 400% from the 08 bottom to 2012! Anyway, they say that history rhymes, and while things feel slightly different now (e.g. MAG6 are insanely profitable oligopolists), one can imagine a period where companies building AI infrastructure get valued in the same way that companies building Internet infrastructure once were (or going further back, Railway infrastructure...). I know that this is a big generalisation, but hopefully just is good for some general thinking.

Nice work, and good timing on it.