ubuy2wron

If you are buying using margin of saftey criteria MSFT by a country mile, MSFT has a bigger moat, if the current CEO of MSFT died suddenly the stock may go up I would not want to be a shareholder the day after Steve Jobs died.

Ditto, this certainly stands in stark contrast to Greenspans position that it was not required to legislate against fraud "the market" would take care of that.

The demand side of the equation in Vancouver clearly is about to get worse at least as far as the Cdn. resident purchaser is concerned. A significant source of demand however in Vancouver has been the offshore mkt. the dynamics of this source of demand is frankly a mystery to me. The supply side of the equation however is also severly constrained and not about to change in the next 18 months in any meaningful way. ALL new construction ceased the day Lehman failed in the Vancouver mkt, the banks just turned off the credit taps for builders developers. If you had not poured the foundations you were told to stop activities. The city of Vancouver cancelled the last 14 meetings of the rezoning sub-comiitee because of a lack of proposals , the only meaningfull supply for the next 18 months will be from exisiting housing stock. The rest of the country however I really can not comment on.

Parsad, Given the latest Goldman news I think it naive to think Goldman lost the most on this deal they may in fact have lost far less because some other arm was taking another position.. Goldman in their statement stated they lost 90 million on the Ababcus deal .... did they.... I will bet that they used the information which they had that RBS had sold some of the CDS to get short RBS when a firm has so many positions it can be very difficult to tease out what their exposure is. I have learned that you can almost always tell when an investment banker is lying.... his lips are moving.

Economic Investment Trust EVT a closed end investment trust which sells at a large discount to NAV which is actually understated and also owns a large block of E L Fianacial which is also seriously undervalued. The equity portfolio is managed by Sanford Bernsein a value manager of decent reputation and a MER of approximated 1/4 of 1%. The equity portfolio is largely international in nature so it would not be a good choice if you have a extremely bullish long term view of the CDN dollar.

If anyone has read Mr Lewis,s newest book the big short he deals with the abolute stupidity and venality of many of the paricipants. Mr personal favorite villan has to be Stan Oneal who personaly has to take responsiblitiy for blowing up Merriil Lynch where I spent almost half of my career I sometimes think the BOD were so out of touch that they appointed Stan CEO because the felt he represented an extension of their proud Irish Catholic leadership heritage.

I do not know ACA at all I am shocked however that by early 2007 there was any one foolish enough to gaurantee any tranch of a pool which consisted of a bunch of junior tranches of subprime mortgages. My own experience is that in many firms NO-ONE was driving the bus you had employees taking on all kinds of unkown risks that senior mgmt was unaware of. I know first hand that the CEO of one bank became aware of his firms exposure to triple A tranches of subprime when a hedge fund which was short his companies stock called and started asking him lots of questions about one particular traders positions which ended up costing this company many billions of dollars.It is interesting that it basically the British tax payer that paid for this as RBS ended up with the ultimately liability on the CDS which were sold to Paulson.

After reading the charges it appears that Goldman if it has any sense will settle with the SEC ASAP for an amt of double the losses and promise never to do it again. This is certainly the track record of the SEC they have had a history of punishing individuals harshly, however never firms or certainly not large ones. The particulars are abhorent if the charges are true which I have no doubt are .

The RRSP rules state that it has to be a security listed on a named exchange. The US OTC mkt does not qualify it has to be an exchange that is qualified ie on the list of exchanges that CRA says is ok. There is no easy work around that I am aware of.

Fairfax and Phoenix investments. It appears that FFH is creating a pretty sizeable stable of Phoenix like investments. Brick, Mega Blocks SFK Pulp, Canwest etc. A similar structure appears to be emerging where they hold less than 20% equity with a warrent that allows them to go over. Does this allow FFH to play with reported earnings in the future. If they exercise their warrent they will have to consolidate these Phoenix investments no? It is interesting because the market really gives zero value for Prems trading ability yet may provide a higher multiple for earnings that these phoenix investments may provide if run through a different set of accounts.

Return I am with you on this one. My position in ELF is larger than FFH I believe the margin of saftey is as large as any inurance company I can invest in today. Management/owners ARE comfortable with the disconnect with valuation as they have been acquiring shares consistently. It is entirely reasonable to expect that at some point in the next 5 years this will trade @ BV and that BV will continue to grow at a number that is around its long term growth rate. It is also entirely reasonable to expect that the controlling family may decide to sell their interest in the insurance subs at some point in the future at a premium to BV which I also think is a possibility that is greater than zero. Any of the above scenarios will generate a return which will be more than satisfactory and takes very little brilliance just a lot of patience. The price you pay is this is not a very liquid name and about as exciting as watching paint dry, but then I have had about enough excitement to last me a while in the last 2 years.

Telus customer service is a train wreck.? Try getting Shaw service re internet it typically takes 30 minutes to speak to a person if you call the service line at Shaw. Shaw and Telus should merge and stop beating each other up. Telus is trying to poach Shaws internet and cable business and Shaw is trying to poach land line business from Telus neither co is profiting form this from my perspective. It is unlikely they would ever be allowed to merge but it seems that perhaps conditions have changed enough because of new tech and competitors a merger may be allowed.

Economic Investment trust ( EVT) A closed end investment trust trading at a 25% discount to NAV it owns a large chunck of ELF an undervalued insurance co IMO. Instant diversification in an actively managed World value portfolio with an MER below most index products about .1/4 of 1% per annum. Perfect buy it and forget about it investment.

Crip I think that Buffett and you are right in that Emotional Control or a being natural contrarian is VERY important. My point in raising the topic is first to just discuss the topic because it is interesting but also as important to make the point that if you believe in the existence of inherent Investment IQ it surely becomes advisable to let someone who has IT to run the bulk of ones personal investment portfolio . It would make zero sense for me to play golf against Tiger Woods or any other PGA card holder for that matter for money no matter how much I practiced because I just do not have the natural born gifts required to compete. Given that we all play against investors of Tigers caliber every day in the investment game it just seems foolish not to, if we can, hire them to play for us at a reasonable price. Which is one of the reasons FFH is currently a significant portion of my investment portfolio. This also led me to purchase shares in BRK-B when they were selling for less than 3000.00 in the fall of 08. I "think" I am a pretty good investor however I KNOW that both Prem and Warren are GREAT investors hence my willingness to deploy a portion of my capital in their direction when it appeared that I was paying little for that expertise. Gotta go catch a plane all for now.

When ever I start to think about ELF my head starts to hurt. It is complicated and I suspect it is complicated by design. ELF owns shares in subsidiaries which in turn owns shares in ELF the companies involved include Economic Investment Trust EVT, United Corporations UNC and Algoma Central ALC. When calculating BVPS I use the same number as foot noted by the co as the number used for reporting EPS, which is approximately 1 million less than shares appearing in annual report as outstanding. Using this methodolgy plus using a sum of the parts approach I suspect that a very large margin of saftey exists in this name. I think their insurance subs would sell for a significant premium to book as would ALC while their investment trust subs will never trade at a premium to BV they are constantly repurchasing public interest at large discounts to BV.

I have been involved in investing for more than 25 years ,for the last decade I have managed a pretax unlevered net return of 18% compounded per annum on my personal portfolio. I have been a student of the investmant Titans for all of my life and I have concluded that the vast majority of great investors are hardwired from birth for success. I have come to the believe we all have an innate investment IQ and a Wharton finance degree will not add all that much in terms of excess investment returns if you have not been blessed with this innate investment IQ. To use an anology to make my point. I am a LOUSY golfer ,if I expended as much time and effort on golf as I do on investing I believe I would still be at best a MEDIOCRE golfer. As an investor it probably makes sense therefore to try to determine as early as possible wether you have got IT or not. If you do not have IT, spend your spare time on improving your golf game and give your dough to some one else to manage. I invite any debate on this topic and I suspect that many of the readers of this space have a very healthy dose of IT.

Sorry fat thumbs again . Viking , My basic arguement is margin of saftey this is trading @ .65 BV the discount to BV is not readily apparent because the number of shares outstanding is overstated. They are a very conservatively managed and structured company. They are controlled by the Jackman family which has been involved in the longest running creeping take over in history. I do not for a second believe that this company has become permanently stupid on the underwriting side, on the investment side they in fact farm out the investment management of some of their float and two non arms length investment trusts.

sorry about that ,fat thumbs. Viking it has bee mentioned on previous threads but I have recently purchased shares in E L Financial. It is the cheapest P/BV quality insurer I am aware of . I can not find much fault with this company at any level except the fact it trades by appointment.

During the hight of the internet boom you could not borrow shares to short because insiders had tied up all the shares available to borrow to put on collars etc for their shares. It made me sick to see insiders sell all of their shares effectively yet not to have to report any of the transactions. Another reason to outlaw derivatives IMO.

Markopolous is being interviewed on CNBC as I type. He is plugging a new book, he has intimated that many more perp walks are likely soon . re the Madoff story.

No I was not aware a movie had been made.