Jaygo

Yes that is crazy. And yes I love to see it.

Are you not concerned about the general market buoyancy pushing these higher. My gut agrees with you but i'm not sure the risk reward is there. Id love to hear more about your thoughts. If the market moves higher will you fold and take a loss? Whats the strategy?

Absolutely regarding the Dominicans, the wild thing is that an obvious visible disadvantage becomes a hidden advantage. Less access to aluminum bats and softballs translate into higher hitting percentage once they play with the right equipment not a metal pipe or stick Its like listening to a podcast on 1.5x speed for a few hours, then when you listen on 1x its seems like slow motion. This is the hidden advantage to growing up playing on concrete. By the time you start playing on grass or turf the game seems like slow motion. Your brain and your body have been conditioned to an extremely fast paced game. Add to the above Spain's small physical stature has forced them to play a very team focused game that translates into success. You don't need super stars when you have a 100 world class players to pick from. Canada's access to our African heritage super athletes has us focusing on speed and power strategies over the finer details like pass accuracy and game control. Maybe France has the golden ticket of big strong players with a higher skill level. I love the world cup because you see so many strategies based on the nations strengths and weaknesses.

Football / soccer is absolutely not cheap in Canada. We are spending roughly 8K per year between my kids. The reasoning is very simple, Canada has absolutely shit weather and outrageously expensive and prohibitive real estate and development fees. A single indoor soccer pitch with an hour of Toronto is going to cost about 10 million bucks. Many will cost multiples of that and if you want to play all year and actually get good you need indoor 6 or 7 months a year. Our yearly fee for my son who is U2017 is 5k and more than half is going to field rentals. He's on the field 3-4 days a week. Maybe in Victoria, Windsor or Vancouver you can get away with outdoor all year round but not anywhere else. Watching Canada and the US play this WC just shows you our kids are just not getting the touches on the ball that other global citizens are. We suck plain and simple when comped to the Europeans. We rely on speed and strength because we need to compensate for lack of ball control and Football IQ. The reason the Spanish players are less athletic ( smaller and slower ) but still excel is that they play the purest form of football, the type that comes from playing every single day in a small court in Barca or Cadiz. They play with the ball like it is glued to their feet because that is the life they live. They grow up playing on a concrete surface in a Plaza or a school courtyard so they are used to a much faster, closer game. In Barca if you play on grass you are rich and at a disadvantage because the tiki taka comes from playing street ball. The more money that gets poured into north American programs will help but a fundamental shift is required to get world class. My son is a top player in his age group here and when we play in a park in Spain he cant get close to the ball, the game is just too fast for him because he is used to playing on long grass or super expensive turf. The reason Canada couldn't get a pass completed against Morocco is because they had no time so panicked, but that is football everywhere else in the world. Pass and move, pass and move.

Id love to hear more about this, were you pro?

Football is amazing for its simplicity, not too many rules and the myriad styles it can be played within that framwork. Millions play every day without refs and lineman without problems. Like any sport it does have issues and outsiders like you @Gregmal are key to getting those little tweaks to help the game progress. I'm in the camp that Croatia goal should count, not within the rules of today but it should as a lifelong player of the game. The ball was touched by the defender and that should reset the play. If the offside rule is there to limit cherry picking than there should be limits to its use once the entire field of players are cramped into the 18 yard box imo. Removing the offside rule entirely would have a bunch of negative consequences for the game but maybe some tweaks where anything in the 5 yard box is fine or something to do with the ball being played from within the 18 yard box.

Lol ya, two middling soccer teams and two nations that are perpetually at war.

Sleep Country is one step closer to Sleep Continent. They have made an offer for Sleep number USA who is in bankruptcy.

In my business coverage Northbridge has never come close to intact. Maybe they are more cautious or hold to higher expected CR but seems like they are not desperate that's for sure. I do agree with you btw that growth would be good but buybacks today can do wonders down the line for shareholders

Buybacks grow net premiums per share. The tough question is just what's going to have a better return.

I think buyback consistency is important like AZO but imo 5% this year would be a little disappointing considering the value. I see the buyback as identical to buying more of the current holdings. Shrink shares out by 10% and now each share holds 11% more of the same holdings so if empire building is not considered you as the capital allocator should just pick the option that is cheaper / better value. In my mind FFH common is just a really good value here so should be the #1 target and a really great opportunity for the head office to alleviate the issue of growing too large that other companies have.

I would assume the buybacks are absolutely ripping right now. If you look at the buyback kings like AutoZone it was steady buybacks for 25 years. It is conceivable that were under 20 million this year and much lower share count a few years out so if this process has basically just started within the past 5 years we are in for a show. Good things take time. We may bicker about value, ROE, wives and performance but the thought of FFH at 15 million shares outstanding feels pretty good if you look at AZO since 1998. The kicker is that AZO has taken on a lot of debt but I feel Fairfax will handle this better so the result could potentially be more impressive. FFH 10k anyone?

Topaz, EIC, Sobo, and NA but I usually just keep a large slug of XEI since it kind of acts like a dogs of the TSX. I borrowed to buy FFH, Strathcona, Topaz, Aecon, Sobo and Exchange income Corp and its been a wonderful experience. The tax treatment is really amazing as long as you have the stomach to ride it out and don't buy at 50x a lot of these have gone up very considerably so the yields are not great anymore.

I'm one Canadian who rationally or irrationally likes dividends. They are very tax efficient in Canada. The div tax credit alone is worth it for margined investments. Borrow and expense the interest. Take dividend and spend, then get tax credit at the end. Very effective for reducing taxes while have some walking around money.

@bearprowler6 Your question is a very good one. In almost every instance I always hope my portfolio holdings drop after I have committed to buying them. This has been a cornerstone of my success and the averaging down process has been massively successful. Recent examples are Aritzia, Exchange Income Corp and Mako Mining. Fairfax going down is going to be a very different experience as I have only known gains and after purchasing my first chunk in 2022 in the mid 800 CAD range it has been up and to the right the whole time with a lot of averaging up. FFH is now a very large holding of nearly 40% of my portfolio and the daily gains and losses are becoming comical to me. If hypothetically it dropped by half here I would be devastated ( mentally not financially ) but I'm not sure what the hell id do as I have so much of my money in it already. My sincere hope is that it starts rising again soon because i'm not willing to sell and take more capital gains and i'm not willing to buy more because it is so big already. Obviously there is a lesson here that the position became too big for comfort and I have trapped myself in a weird matrix of taxes owing, borrowed money and missing gains. I am pretty happy with the company anyway and try not to watch it daily.

I've been buying Topaz energy weekly. I moved half my ARC position over already and am just waiting / hoping for a better offer than shell's but that looks unlikely. The CRA wins again! Topaz is number 6 in the portfolio now. Will be #5 once the ARC deal is concluded as I have no interest in holding Shell. I also bought some Aecon and Terravest A recent conversation with a mid size construction CEO has opened my eyes to the AI integration that I never expected. Order tracking, inventory, equipment idle analytics ect. The use cases you never hear about are very real and are creating significant efficiencies. This gentleman is an operator first kind of guy and rose from a teenage day labourer to CEO of a 100Million EV private. He claims they are saving 10% across the board two years into bringing on a voice activated AI program for their crews. A company like Aecon will likely be slower to respond but will gain huge in the end, they are also a picks and shovels play for the space as well. Virtuous cycle confirmed.

slimmed down my Crocs position. Building up a bit of cash. Trying to get to 10% but I hate the feeling of not being invested.

Sorry I don't have an answer but my recommendation would be to join a Facebook group for Canadian expats in Portugal. The info will likely be more relevant and timely. I am on one for Canadians in Spain and the detailed discussions are pretty amazing.

This year the AGM and the amazing dinner the night before just solidified my confidence in the company. The flat year leading up to it helped soften the edges where the previous 3 years had a lot of exuberance that can be unhelpful when making an investment decision. What I saw was a really level headed crew full of very smart people who know they are not infallible and more importantly immortal. I like the open transition from the old to the young going on with everyone to see (something BRK failed at) and the new people seem like the same smart level headed type. Yesterdays drop was my single largest one day account drop and I laughed it off and was calling out to my wife like the score in a ball game. 28k! 20K 40K 50K 60K 74K!!!! She really didn't like it! ( thankfully she doesn't know about West Red lake gold eh!!) Like others I would have loved to trade around the drop but wasn't able to. By next week they will be buying back shares and if even if we have another year or two of depressed results the future seams bright. I am a happy long term owner here.

Just filled, I placed the trade just a few minutes past the open. RBC brokerage kind of sucks.

Well I didn't sell yesterday, and didn't fill my stink bid of 1630 this morning so I guess its back to the salt mines for old Jaygo.

Lol its so tempting isn't it.. I thought about dumping in my tax free yesterday and then got distracted, could have saved a quick 15k but with my luck it would have gone up not down.

Yeah of course a top 5 holding going up 20% in a day is a nice "problem" to have. My only issue is mainly with the capital gains taxes but i'm not sure how that plays out with the share and cash exchange with Shell. This stuff never seems to happen in my TFSA

So much for this paying my bills in retirement. Arc was bought by shell this morning. I now have a very large short term gain in a taxable account. Uncle Carney and the CRA wins again.

I reversed this trade today. Saved 4.5 bucks on the strath from my sell price and 9% gain on the proceeds from the non resource stuff. It would have been nice to do it yesterday as SCR was in the 35's but i'm still happy with the 600 shares turning into 739 with a little trade. I like this kind of lucky trade as I don't need to keep chasing new names. I find companies I like and just keep flip flopping around and picking up extra pennies as volatility moves the price. Its not fool proof and requires patience and luck but it consistently works