ubuy2wron

Parsad, Ya gotta try Moderne Burger on West 4th its pricy but they do have a great burger for the purists out there.

You picked Mexico over Hawaii which is where I am looking for a second home. Why?

I have tried for years to get someone to quote me a single premium whole life policy which is pure insurance and a great tax dodge but to no avail.

Sanjeev, Its ok to give them $999,999,999.99 but a billion is too much I agree ;D

Blodget is disgusting he is Eddy Haskel's twin brother.He has not changed his spots one bit as an analyst he time after time issued research reports based on either their headline appeal or alternatively he would write what he was told whether he believed it to be true or not. I am convinced that Henry and others have found alternative revenue streams other than advertising to suppliment the revenues for their new media ventures.

Nice house Eric. I live in Vancouver which is in serious bubble territory as far as residential RE is concerned. Here is a typical listing in the wrong part of town. http://www.realtylink.org/prop_search/Detail.cfm?areatitle=Vancouver%20East&ARPK=236,233,241,245,244,242,235,240,246,239,247,237,855,432,238,234,243&ComID=&agentid=&MLS=V789442&rowc=4&rowp=1&BCD=GV&imdp=&RSPP=5&AIDL=243,234,238,432,855,237,247,239,246,240,235,242,244,245,241,233,236&SRTB=P_Price&ERTA=true&MNAGE=0&MXAGE=200&MNBT=1&MNBD=1&PTYTID=5&MNPRC=750000&MXPRC=900000&SCTP=RA

I think far too many people are paying attention to Mr Tilson and his cabal of housing doomsayers. Has anyone here even bothered to see how cheap money is these days and what it means on a 30 year mortgage at fixed rates. In Phoenix one can buy a house with a pool on a golf course less than 5 years old for under 100k See linkhttp://www.ziprealty.com/buy_a_home/logged_in/search/home_detail.jsp?index=0&source=ARMLS&cKey=4kv0lf26&page=1&listing_num=4294881&numResults=208. The listing is for 73,000 with 25%down your mortgage payment with a 30 year fixed is 300 per month. Investors are buying these houses and renting them to people who were foreclosed out of their homes across the street for 600 per month. It is this economic which is creating the floor under housing prices . People need a place to live and they are building dam few new ones in fact you have to go back to pre WW2 to see new home construction at lower levels. Mean while 1.5 million households are being formed every year. Every house that is being foreclosed is bought by either a owner occupier or an investor in fact they are in bidding wars with each other. The old owner who is turned out now is a renter and can move into the house down the block for a rent of less than half of his former mortgage payment the new owner is happy the new mortgage issuer is happy the new tennant is reasonably happy the bank that issued the first mortgage well not so happy but even they are a little happier because the mkt has finally found a clearing price so they know what their liability is. It is all made possible because the Helicopter Ben is buying up every piece of mortgage back paper outstanding. At some point the banks are going to wise up and start to seriously renogiate these mortgages which are likely to default instead of going through the expensive foreclosure process and then the supply will disappear over night. If you are under water to the tune of 50% of course you are going to walk however if the bank takes a middle road and says we will forgive you X percent of the loan people will not walk away it really is that simple.

All of the Cdn banks have been in receipt of class action on this matter most have settled for peanuts and improved their disclosure .... they now send you a statement full of legalese telling you how they are going to screw you on forex before they just screwed ya. The rules actually allow you to hold foreign currencies in your RRSP but no bank or broker in Canada allows it. Yes only sophisticated investors look beyond the 9.99 comish to what the true cost is. A Banker /broker has many many ways to earn a fee

I absolutely think there is a heck of a screenplay or novel in the stories as they are evolving. I have read deepcapture since day 1 and have watched the stories emerge and have had exactly the same thoughts truth is stranger than fiction

If you are dealing with an advisor in Canada as opposed to a portfolio manager who can take discretion and can run pooled accounts you should simply ask to see how the advisor runs his own personal money. Many who are advising frankly are awful at managing money and security analysis. A few however are absolute gems they are ethical smart and worth every penny . If the advisor can show you decent market beating returns with his own capital for a decent period of time it is likely you are dealing with someone who has figured out the investment game or alternatively is lucky either one is a valuable attribute if you need some help driving the bus. Finding a great advisor however is no simple task however be prepared to kiss a few frogs before you find your prince.

Eric as a US resident no Canadian broker will open an account for you, thank the SEC for this. I am sure you can find a US domiciled broker who will extend margin on Cdn listed securities.

I found this link to story about SEC lack of internal financial controls. I thought the readers here might appreciate the irony.http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202435563311&rss=newswire

Will the options eventually cease to be traded as well on US exchanges. I do not currently have a position but I have enjoyed profits on leaps in the past.

The trusts were created before the crash of 29 by Hal Jackmans father. They were levered at the time and they almost went to zero. I suspect that nothing significant will happen until after Hal's passing so you better be patient. The Jackmans who are one of Canada's wealthiest families have a lock on this company and nothing is going to get done with the structure unless they want it to change. Hal has slowly divested himself over the years of many of his holdings he had control of National Trust it was sold to Scotia Bank hence the largish holding in Scotia Bank. I wish they would merge or sell to Prem as it would allow Prem to invest the float and excess capital which exists in ELF. They do operate the business with an owners mentality and extremely conservatively, however Hal has been operating the worlds longest creeping takeover and I think unless someone can strucure something that will be very tax friendly to them it probably is not going to change. This is an investment where you will likely get very decent long term returns and then one day in the fuure you will see a large increase in value because of a transaction either going private or merger or sale but it will be on the Jackmans terms. An interesting point on the NAV of UNC and EVT is that they are actualy understating their NAV as the report the NAV on an after tax basis given that their historical costs on some large investments is close to zero this understates their value.

The real answer is that they are quite happy that the stock is undervalued they are constantly buying back stock I own both ELF and EVT the trust.

Warren has issued BRK stock in many acquisitions if my memory is not faulty in every case he did it when he felt that he was getting more than he was giving. On another stream there has been discussion re splitting the B's. Given that the bulk of Warrens A are going to be converted to B,s and sold into the mkt over the next 20 years. I suspect that splitting the B's has a lot to do with the fact that it is now going to be a MUCH more liquid stock in the future Splitting the B's is only going to make the liquidity of the B's that much greater as now every one will be able to particapte . I still have not figured out when control of BRK comes into play but it is a certainty at some point.

Does anyone think that the fact SAC maybe the subject of intense scrutiny become a tradable event. I have traded OGXI which was a largish relatively illiquid holding of Galleon. Will investors start to pull their dough from SAC funds may they become in fact victims of the same chain of events which they attempted to orchestrate with FFH or is my poetic justice scenario just a fantasy?

By many sources Milliken had 1 billion left after paying his fines Stevie has more than a few shekles left kicking around perhaps they can grab his house and use it for an exec retreat they could play hockey in the indoor skating rink see link.http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://www.hauteliving.com/wp-content/uploads/cohenmansion1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.hauteliving.com/hauteblog/update-steven-a-cohen%25E2%2580%2599s-megamansion-getting-even-larger/&usg=__2XrEa0NxhPgwC9e5y_iXjTdAXck=&h=296&w=480&sz=141&hl=en&start=2&um=1&tbnid=EeHVsDJL6PYf7M:&tbnh=80&tbnw=129&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsteve%2Bcohen%2527s%2Bhouse%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1

I do not have a clue if MR. Mkt will attach a greater or lesser value to FFH earnings and BV going forward however I am starting to see a trend developing where the clubby group of FFH long-term shareholders is starting to be replaced by shareholders who might be willing to pay a higher relative price for the stock. Lets face it we are collectively far to cheap to ever pay a premium price for our beloved FFH. I also suspect given the increase in liquidity that has been orchestrated by Prem you may find yourself competing with FFH itself if the shares became cheap for any reason in the immediate future.

It is probably a low risk bet here but a lot of the monopoly pricing power has disappeared because of the emergence of so many alternative trading venues. I'm thinking John Thane wishes he stayed at the NYSE tho.

Vancouver residential real estate is a run away train wreck about to happen. I have lived in Vancouver all of my life and it is a VERY liveable city especially today. Prices in Vancouver today are comparable to London, New York ,Paris and Hong Kong. Prices reached this level because of a combinatrion of once in a generation or two low interest rates and an artificialy restrained supply. The vast majority of developable land was taken out of the supply 30 years by something called the Agricultural land reserve. Every metric re affordabilty is flashing red. Wages have actually declined in the past decade yet prices are up by my guesstimate 300% . Middle class Asians are finding it very attractive because of our liberal immigration policies( the rich have already come and gone with a passport and are back in Asia making money. We also find ourselves in a funny situation where credit is abundantly available for resre purchasers but incredibly restricted for developers. If you can fog a mirror you can get a mortgage with less than 10% down basnks will even lend you part of the down payment. If you are a builder however credit availabilty is about zero. This is because the govt is basically guaranteeing all res mortgages today but offering no such promises to the developers.

This is a classic cigar butt business. It is cheap by my definition ,the bear case on this co is pretty entrenched and widespread the bear case is not that different from the newspaper arguement which I would not touch with even a borrowed barge pole. It is certain that what ever is delivered on your doorstep a decade from now will be much smaller than todays version of the Yellow Pages. The companies mgmt however does not appear to be entirely brain dead the much slower than I expected decline in traditional revenues has been mostly offset with revenues from online sources. Their moat in Canada is pretty wide and Google for whom they currently are selling ad words I see as their real competition. It is interesting that the stock jumped at the same time as they announced an IPHONE app for the Yellow pages. Frankly the best of all worlds would be a Google take-over. Similar cos in the US are bancrupt or soon to be but that is more a function of agressive capital structure (too much leverage) FD I am long tho not as much as I was 2 weeks ago. I suspect the reason that revenues have been surprisingly sticky in their traditional business because many small business owners still find value for money in their directory spend.

I have owned this for a long time. I was wondering when it was going to come up this is a pretty seriously undervalued co it unfortunately is likely to stay that way until Hal Jackman passes. They control two closed end investment trusts Economic Investment Trust and United Corporations. The trusts also have large positions in ELF and vice versa. The trusts trade at big discounts to NAV and NAV is accounted for on a fully tax paid basis .The trusts are managed by Jarislowsky and Sanford Bernstein. This is definately run with an owners mentality however Hal Jackman has sold off every public entity he has owned at some point and I expect the insurance companies may be sold at some point as well. I always thought they would be great additions to the Fairfax stable pretty decent insurance -underwriting not terrible on the investment side. As an aside Tim Mcelvaines father was for many years the CEO of one of the insurance co's. Sorry for the ramble but its late in the day and I have to take my wife for dinner its her birthday .

My fav money hunny was Liz who just suddenly disappeared about a 18 months ago. I would have tuned in to watch her recite the alphabet. ::)

How do you buy? I use interactive brokers and it does not appear. Anyone know of a way to have good access to bond mark, cheaply? Its a listed bond TSX exchange traded symbol is sfk.db it trades with about a 5 point spread and is not very liquid