ubuy2wron

Happy Anniversary to Prem and all of the long term employees and partners of Fairfax. Prem you and your team are living proof that nice guys finish first not last.

Great debate and very worth while having ,however I am one who has to toil to reach Obamas arbitrary level of "richness" so I will let others continue the arguement.

To all the tea partiers ranting about govt. tax policies being confisacatory. The wealthiest person I have ever known said to me he did not mind paying taxes and he was in favour of most welfare programs because he did not want hungry men holding him up at gun point to feed their family. Democracy is a dictatorship of the majority and yes the majority will always try to ensure the minority pays. Politics is the art and science of making some one else pay for something, the alternatives however are much less palatable. The western worlds system of capitalism, rule of law and democracy has worked pretty damn well for EVERYONE so do not be in such a hurry to replace it with some form of anarchy based economic Darwinism.

My best guess is lots and they are neither making nor losing much on their equities after considering their hedges.

Is not just about every bond desk just a big prop trading operation. I for one would like to see fixed income mkts move to a open transaparent platform. I would also like to see HFT be outlawed nano second bids and offers are foolish the specialist system which existed for decades previously was a corrupt system some described it as a lisence to steal but it was a highly regulated den of thieves. The markets have devolved into an exchange of thousands of pick pockets all furiously attempting to lift every one elses wallet . I do not think this is what Adam Smith was referencing when he talked about the Invisible Hand

So your advice then is I should not bother to build a wine cellar that can hold more than a reasonable man can consume in the next year and bit ....I will instruct my architect accordingly.

Pump and dump- short and distort they are two sides of the same coin How ever the repercussions of those activities which are both manipulative IMO are asymetric. SEC involvement and other regulatory agency investigation can only have one impact on a stock price. Hedgies learned long ago that the simple announcement of an investigation would have an extremely negative impact on security prices. I believe that the rules that define what exactly is manipulation have to be loosened to keep hedgies honest. As certain players discovered it really is not required to be right in your investment thesis you only had to convince a regulator or journalist that you may be right to ensure you have a profitable trade. Journalists are a lot like regulators in the sense that a negative story is much more likely than a positive one to have an impact on a securities pricing. Also I believe journalists are much more likely to chase down a negative story over a positive one. Bad news sells papers or attracts eyeballs a story on how much the sitting president loves and respects his wife would garner zero attention a photo shot of him oogling an asst. would race around the world in a heart beat.

Was this not a recent spin off from Verizon? Spin offs have been a lucrative area to look for value I would appreciate any other commentary you may have re this name. There are only so many 10Ks one can read and a heads up from this board is always appreciated.

I for one am more than a little tired of market letter writers making outlandish forecasts. History is littered with Cassandras predicting the immanent demise of mkts or even nations. Elliot wave theorists get me especially annoyed. Mr Prechters nonsense should get no attention from any serious investor. I can assure every reader here that while the vast majority of Soothsayers may be quite entertaining the value they add to investment decisions is less than zero. The Hulbert report actually tracks their recommendations and in his learned opinion finding long term actionable wisdom amongst letter writers is very rare indeed. The future is always equally unknowable that is a physical constant like the speed of light, our individual and group perception of that undeniable uncertainty however can be used to profitably invest, in fact it may be the distilled esscence of what value investing is all about.

Parsad, I will zip you over to 5 guys for lunch some time its just across the bridge but I have to make sure I have my full compliment of FFH first because I know the effect it will have on the stock. LOL

Read read and then read some more. I devour information the internet is like encylopedias for me which I used to read for fun as a child. Running keeps me sane other than that I cook ,love food and wine, my wife can not boil water but she is great at ordering pizza!!!! I also spend a huge amount of time looking at residential real estate vacation properties in Arizona and Maui. Which I think is a huge value opportunity by the way. Small cap my bank account may be larger but your family is priceless you have acquired true wealth.

Vancouver is not the best place for the sell side in that there is only one firm with a head office here Cannacord and do not buy a house unless ya want to buy mine. There are many excellent buy side firms in Vancouver however. In fact I suspect most of the buy side firms in Vancouver are regular contributors or at least readers here.

I own it and am thinking about adding here. If you look at it from the standpoint of the trees or the land it looks cheap it will not however be generating a lot of sales from either for the next 18 months.

You might want to look at Genworth a private mkt. mortgage insurer. I would be interested in your opinion on this as a short idea.

I just finished watching Herbie on CNBC trashing BRK. Why is my reaction to this guy so visceral almost lost my breakfast.

I think the post WW-2 period of all most all western nations are examples of growth in a high tax high debt environment. I for one am more than a little tired of hearing commentators speak about govt. expenditures being wastefull and not creating any real jobs. The economy really does not care where consumption occurs or wages are created, clearly building tanks was a better use of tax payers money in 1943 than filling pot-holes as losing a war has some pretty dramatic short- term negative consequences. The entire WW-2 and post period however was one of rapidly increasing tax rates high personal savings rates a huge increase in govt spending and then after the War was over an explosion of consumer spending. I actualy believe the Bp disaster will have a stimulative effect on the economy. It will cause unemployment rates to decline in the Gulf states

Congrats to Chicago and their fans the best team won. I own exactly one hockey jersey and its a Chicago jersey and I have lived in Vancouver all of my adult life.

The single most valuable asset one has is reputation and yours sir is clearly untarnished. Sorry for implying otherwise. The thing I like most about this board is that members are almost universaly decent. Perhaps it is one of the attributes of value investing .

I could come up with a another whole set of questions on economics which would result in a different outcome. Try asking questions on regulation, taxes, deficits, govt. spending. Suddenly the libertarians and conservatives look like economic dunces and liberals are the geniuses. All this test and survey uncovers are political and philosphical biases.

A full service broker can be worth his weight in gold or he can be a totaly useless or anything in between. You should NOT have asked him to print of hundreds of pages of documents which are available for free on line. What you should have asked him was to read the 10K''s and give you his insight if any. If he was unwilling or unable to do that and you were contemplating a significant transaction then you should fire him. However you have to be willing of course to have read the 10k''s etc yourself. If you do not need a full service brokers advice then why pay them . Most individuals at discount brokers experience awful investment results however the readers of this site are in no way representative of the avg. investor. To the poster who says I keep a small amt with a full service broker and my large account with a discount broker I consider this cheating unless you have advised your full service broker of the fact. Execution is the least important service a broker offers except for the most active clients.

History does not repeat but it often ryhmes. I have been using a playbook for a long time that what we are seeing unfolding in the worlds capital markets is not dissimilar to what unfolded between 1968 and 1982. By 1968 we had a market that generaly was overbought and overvalued the "NIFTY FIFTY" era drove the valuation of growth stocks to a multi generational high. The low of 1974 drove valuations to a multi generational low. I suspect that the March low of 2009 was the the best we will see I also suspect that we are still a few years away from a similar turning point to the August 1982 low in the mkt which set up the great bull mkt run that continued pretty much unabated till the 2000 top.How long we continue in this sideways trading pattern is largely determined I think by future trends in interest rates and inflation. At least half of the return during the 1982 to 2000 period was driven by the drop in yields and inflation rates and the impact this had on US treasuries. If we are to see an extended period of higher bond yields and higher inflation then this will create a pretty stiff head wind for equity prices overall and cetirus paribus will extend the sideways price movement

I am also heavily in cash it is not so much a macro call as a micro one ,not too much appeared extremely cheap and one month ago at least as measured by the VIX which i bought the mkt over-all seemed quite bubbly. I sold my Vix position the Friday before the European bail-out was announced and have been picking away at European equities particularly ING ever since. But just nibbling. One general observation on macro issues if we are building a society were no-one loses then if we use the example of the Japanese experience do we not have the end result of no body wins either.

To the contrary, it shows 4 bids, the most recent dated May 10th at $750. The minimum bid increment is $100. That gives a minimum next bid of $850. The auction is open for another 14 days. In most long time period open auctions like this, the bid price prior to the final minutes is of no consequence whatsoever relative to predicting the hammer price. This is a signed first edition, donated by Seth himself, so I presume it is in reasonable condition. I doubt that this auction will close for less than $1000. Thanks for the correction, though I note that half of those bids come from a username that matches the charity. Its probably Seth running up the bid and old hedgie trick to bost their quarterly fees. He probably has 10,000 copies in his basement. Just kidding folks but those sort of tricks happen all the time in illiquid mkts like fine art. I have always wanted a copy I may bid myself thanks for the tip and the original post. I actualy think we have only 5 more years of sideways mkts so I guess I am not as pessimistic as Seth.

Only fairfax shareholders would post 40 complaints about FFH underwriting results the day that Mr. Mkt decides our favorite co. is worth almost 5% more and the dow is off 150 points.