Myth465

I lean towards holding my Leaps. They are 2011 and I can exercise in December, Collect the DIV, and then hold the shares I want. I have 1 Leap and it is my biggest position and is deep in the money. Obviously I cant hold all 100 shares. I think 1 year should do wonders for BV but its a gamble. Are there any 2012's on the Canadian boards.

The Companies are pretty well known and discussed on this board. Aside from FFH and BRK. FUR - Has a bit of cash and is a REIT. He is waiting for the commercial space to continue declining. He also owns a nice chunk of stock and has Berkowitz as a backer. L - Run by the Tisch brothers and they have cash to spend. You receive a double discount because some of the holdings are also undervalued (CNA trades at a steep discount to book but, has historically been a crappy insurer. They are rightsizing the investments and trying to turn it around). BAM - I dont hold because I think BAM is unnecessarily complex and doesnt have much liquity but, many also see it in the same light as the others. My core holdings are FUR, L, and FFH. Looking at BRK and SNS. MCF - Tied to natural gas but run by an owner manager with a cash pile. SNS - Another good options.

I am buying on Monday and will be fully invested. I feel as though I am prepared for the downturn and own mostly owner manager companies. Most of these companies are run by capital allocators with excess cash who and will take advantage of the downturn. I will also be able to pump income into the market if it goes down for a period of months. I am hoping to raise my cash position to 5-10% of my portfolio via income by the end of March. I should do much better then during the last downturn (Heavy short term leverage is extremely painful in a declining market) so I am not too worried. I will stay debt free and will continue to pump excess income into the market or cash depending on the bargains. The owner managers should act as a buffer during a downturn. It will probably still be painful looking at my brokerage account. I would love to wait but, I am finding alot of cheap great deals right now and by and large like my holdings.

I never bought CCHN unfortunately. It ran up significantly prior to the buy (from $7 to $11) and I couldnt find a catalyst for the company. I eventually stopped following it. Not a bad deal for those who went into it.

Own CNA - Huge BV Discount and Hopefully the company is being turned around by a former Chubb VP. L - Double discounts at CNA, DO, BWP and also Highpoint for free. Run by great capital allocators. LRE - Profitable insurance which makes money on insurance. Great combined ratio. FUR - Owner Manager and Strong backer will capitalize on CRE Issues. FFH- Owner Manager and Excellent Capital allocator with 20Billion in Capital. ESV - Cheap and Growing offshore Driller RRR - Cheap Rental Company. Watching / Buying AI - Very interesting Company buying Mortgage Securities MCF - Owner Manager, Cheap Oil & Gas. SNS - Great Manager at a fair price. DHT - Seems like a cheap shipping company

Thanks for the tip on Lancashire . There investor day was very interesting and I really like the Management team. They seem like the perfect complement to FFH. I will be buying as soon as I have some additional Capital.

Loews and CNA are my biggest holdings on a combined basis. CNA is selling for below book and Loews gives you Highmount for free. Should be interesting to watch everything unfold. It also looks like CNA is slowly turning around and if the CEO can pull it up then we should at least get book value for it. BWP and DO also give you natural gas exposure and the BWP GP should be worth quite a bit overtime. I am also looking closer at MCF and will be buying when I free up cash. Hopefully I can get in before they announce drilling results.

Now I have the task of raising the cash to exercise my FFH Leaps when the time comes. Thats a pretty amazing transaction, the bond team really seems to be doing amazing things.

Looks like both of these transactions will hit in Q1 next year. Anyone know what the basis is for the HR REIT one.

Humm I am not sure where the wires were crossed but, I cant see how many people would find it hard to disagree with Ben. Also its nice to see that people are thinking through issues and arent just hammering on an agenda or ideology.

I have noticed that too and have also noticed that the quotes arent as real time as other brokerages. My wealth though is a rounding error compared to some of you guys so they amounts traded are fairly insignificant. The $10 - $20 in fees hurts more then the spread for me. I do however hope to have the spread become a problem for me one day.

I keep my bread and butter boring stock portfolio at wells. You can do international but, its $75 a trade. All the exotic and FI stuff goes to thinkorswim. This nets me 200 free trades for shares only and cheap trades for all else.

Wells Fargo is great for a brokerage. Free trades in all your accounts as long as you have 25k in total assets. I have a roth, checking, and taxable there. 100 free trades for 2 accounts. I use think or swim for options trading and foreign stocks and it works out well. most of the time no overhead and on options and foreign stocks extremely low overhead.

Thanks for the Link - Oldschoolvalue and Manual of Ideas both seem excellent and I have added them to my RSS. I listen to 90% of the economist each week. Read every post on this board via RSS. Also subscribed to Econoview (follow Krugman and a few others), Calcrisk (for Macro), BW Cover Podcast, Wealthtracks weekly Podcast, and Peter Schiff for an Austrian viewpoint on things.

I havent even looked at it. My thesis is this Lancashire Holdings - Solid underwriting profit quarter after quarter at or near book value. Profits and Excess capital are paided out via dividend FFH - Solid investment performance, strong risk management, and a play on a hard market. A leveraged hedged fund so to speak. .CNA - Weak underwriting but, strong backers and only 60% of book value. Deep Value Discount. Also a turnaround play on Chubb Management. What does MFC Profit.

ERICOPOLY why not pay cash then get a home equity loan?

15% of my holdings are in FFH options, I definitely want to know what happens next.

Lol at the thinly veiled request reply. I was thinking man this is great, I hope he updates it when I was looking over it.

Ya i see the sell off as an opportunity but, ATSG is already too big of a holding for me. It seems like everything is in place and I look forward to an announcement one of these days which sends the stock up quite a bit.

I agree with Bruce, I can understand why Buffett is buying but I wouldnt be buying due to the high cost and low cash on cash yield .

Thanks for the Link, very good video. Definitely applicable to investing and proves that Munger is a genius with his mental models.

Lowenstein's doesnt seem like he is trying to make Buffett into something. He just seems to give you the raw product. I dont know why Buffett didnt pick him, I have read 3 of his books and all of them are excellent. I wish I had shorted GM after reading his last book, that short idea was easily worth the reading time.

I dont think they at least Ron Paul are concerned with selling books. He seems to really believe that he has gotten to the hard of a lot of the United States problems. He believes the endless wars (on drugs, and the middle east) and several other issues relate to the ability to not pay for something and then inflate your currency to cover its costs. He believes it gives politicians an easy way out instead of leveling with the people and making them make tough decisions. Look at healthcare, I am for universal healthcare and dont mind paying for it in some reasonable way but, the left is promising it can be done at a cost of $0. That makes no sense. Gold has no intrinsic value to me and is pretty ugly as jewelry. I would like to tie the hands of politicians so that what they vote for they have to pay for but, going back to gold for historical purposes doesnt make much sense to me. There has to be a sensible way of accomplishing this. The average person thinks that the government can just give them stuff for nothing and doesnt realize it comes from someone or something.

I would say the Making of An American Capitalist and the edited and sorted list of his shareholders letters are required reading and are the best books on the man.

isnt this about the same rate that they sold debt for. Now a bit of bad news. Unlike conventional munis, which pay interest that is exempt from federal income tax, Build America Bonds are subject to federal tax. That means California paid a higher gross yield on the bonds than it would have paid on conventional munis.