Jaygo

The letter to SHAREHOLDERS references a letter he sent to EMPLOYEES and that is what gamecock was talking about. Its a letter to employees sited within the letter to shareholders and depending on what employees received it i'm sure the letter landed between uninterested and mildly annoyed.

Lonesome Dove has some truly incredible character building and the pacing is near perfect. The landscape unfolds for you beautifully and really gives a feel of the west at the time. You want to love the characters but deep down you know you probably shouldn't. Its not a time I would want to have lived but a time I am drawn to, same goes for early 1900's Russia. I tried other McMurty books but couldn't get into them. I guess it was a one off at least for me.

I think Hemmingway has some good romance in otherwise non romance books. For whom the bell tolls and a farewell to arms both touch on love and are entertaining reads. If you like Western genres Lonesome Dove is in my top 5 all time books and Id recommend it to anyone.

Yeah but that's the dystopian way of looking at it. whether its partially true or not my hope is that humans are not the property of others to consume or not need with robots around vs being their own individuals who may also benefit from robots.

Nice to see some numbers around it. Yeah 10 percent is definitely not going to cause too much issues.

I'm not sure of the way this will play out but if humans are a very efficient machine burning just a few thousand calories per day and we are going to replace much of our work with robots like we have with gasoline and electric powered machines ( tractors, dishwasher, laundry etc ) wont we be increasing the energy usage by a huge margin. A human per day burns the equivalent of about 250ml of gasoline so if we assume many tasks will become robotic and the humans will remain, we are going to need considerably more energy to feed both the humans and the robots. Am I wrong? The dystopian would say we just don't need the people, but that's kind of a messed up way to look at human life as if its something to be consumed so hopefully that is not a consideration in the discussion.

Did you visit Rioja? its on my list as I love the wine. You would have driven very close assuming you took the direct road from Burgos to Zargoza. Also my dad's business partner was from NW of Pamplona and has claimed many times that Northern Spain is the the best kept secret, tough people too. Proper Asturtian stew is my favorite cold weather food but hard to find the key ingredients in Canada. My wife and I drove through the Pyrenees in a summer of love ridging back and forth from France and Spain exploring little towns. That was 15 years ago, now we tend to go south as the kids love the beach and I prefer dry weather. Andalucia is pretty special in its own colourful way. My family is west of Valencia in the Albaracin and its full of abandoned stone towns and very much off the international radar but also incredible. Unfortunately its cold in the winter so my wife is not a fan.

bought some more West red lake gold. I should add this is a average down 15% from two days ago. Timing eh!

My personal advice would be to buy an index fund like ZCN.to it has a couple hundred Canadian companies. Pays a small dividend but if your interested you can buy a fund that is similar but does not pay a dividend or if it works you can buy XEI.to that has a slightly higher div and is organised in a similar style of the dogs of the tsx portfolio. Canadian tax payers are generally best in Canadian companies and we trade at a slight discount to the united states and you don't have the headwind of the US brand being damaged right now.

Yesterday I bought a starter in WRLG.v at 1.37. The Madsen mine just opened and I am playing an extended Lassonde curve here, 600tpd of high grade working towards 800tpd. It is absolutely artic cold in NW ontario right now so I am not expecting any fireworks but the mine is open and operating with a slightly elevated AISC due to the seemingly high end operation. If the can work those number down while increasing production we should be halfway up the second ramp on the Lassonde curve. Plan today is to get to 1.90 within the next few Q's and revaluate. Also some CROX and FFH

I'm a never sell of my original BRK.B investment from 2014, that investment moved me away from pure speculation and shit returns to compounder style yearly gains. It taught me that buy and hold can work. I really respect WB and the company as a whole so i'm sticking with them but imo we are in a bull market and there is just too much juice to squeeze elsewhere to have BRK as anything more than a small position.

i guess you can get notifications to your phone or something but that could get really annoying. Oh well

I really wish I was better prepared for this type of thing. Its rare but by the time I got a few bucks in order the sub 2200 was gone. Who knows maybe well get another crack at it.

I got 10 at 2270 3 at 2204

I'm really not trying to be cruel. I just see what I see. My own mum and her friends are the case in point. They go to Kelsey's twice a week. She is on the older side of a boomer so i'm not trying to lump everyone in here, but the fact is we will all get to a point where a nice lunch out is the highlight of our week. Some will hold off longer than others but the time for travel will end and the time for pickleball and golf will end too.

I largely agree intuitively but in reality you and I are wrong. it is really important to try and look at life / relationships / investing etc through other peoples eyes. I personally think most of the recipe resto's are pure shit but they do attract a certain clientele and I think there is a lot of juice to squeeze out of the boomers. I think many young like yourself don't realize how much money is sitting in accounts of the boomers who may be too weary to travel, to weak to ski and for whom going out to a restaurant is the most exciting thing they can do. They want something brightly lit ( bad eyes ) not too much character ( not cool and definitely not noisy ), reliable taste ( bland ) and the recipe banner fits this perfectly. I think they will get a decent return on recipe and once the category ages out completely they can wind down what's not working or sell it to PE

I held my nose and bought some Lunr. This is the Lundins new royalty co. The price is out of whack right now as it just started trading. the position is meant to keep my eye on it. The initial trade was supposed to start around 10 but i just paid close to 13. I think once things normalize this will be a top performer. That base could be closer to $8 and the hope is with time we settle down to the appropriate price then move up from there as the business succeeds.

I mentioned visiting Team Town Sports that's owned by Sporting life group and they had a large area of clothing that was mostly Nike and UA with some other stuff, Adidas, Puma, etc sprinkled in. It is very possible that Fairfax see a resurgence in UA. Personally I'm not so sure about the investment but different demographics may favor it over my little place in the world and it could be regaining popularity.

Yeah I agree. Maybe the purist will say it is not cheap enough but I think a stable buyback would really help shrink the size issue and lessen the effect of the cash "burden" At 3 % of shares outstanding yearly would send a message and I think it would help get the share price moving steadily in the right direction. My assumption when I bought in 2014 was BRK would double every 5-6 years and that has basically been bang on. A buyback could help keep that train chugging along and I really don't want a dividend the way I have it setup in my accounts.

I totally agree. I think the hands off approach was too relaxed and not the right style as the company grew bigger and especially now that warren is leaving. You have to look at it from a human perspective. Imagine its the early 80's and WB just bought your company, that would be the greatest signal ever you have succeeded in life and now you really want to please him (you bust your ass) fast forward 30-40 years and management of that same company has changed many times over and now you sit at the bottom of a massive conglomerate where your yearly numbers are half what BNSF does by breakfast. You have never met WB and have no chance of catching his eye anyway. Your growth cap-ex ideas get ignored and all profits disappear into the beast that is BRK. Most humans would take that Friday off and in general not give a crap anymore (you slack off) My guess is this is happening all over the place inside BRK and Greg is going to get the juices flowing or send those companies out the door to PE. I have anecdotes but am not interested in discussing for the sake of my contacts. I am in the camp of BRK having a very bright future ahead and margins will slowly increase company wide

I find it interesting that Todd wet to JPM. As a business history guy I always felt J. Peirpont Morgan and Buffett had a similar cachet as the men who could move markets and were talked about recuing markets and businesses many times. J. PM effectively ended the crash of 1893 and 1907 and WB with his Buy American gave confidence in the system during the GFC. I think Abel has been around WB long enough to show his chops and I expect brighter days ahead. I do think there is a lot of wood to chop and selling some of the smaller stuff to PE and investing in others is definitely needed. Its entirely likely that WB stayed on a little too long to let the others grow, only time will tell if this has caused succession issues.

I visited Team Town Sports managed by the sporting life group. Hands down the best sports store i've been too. Not a bass pro style as its purely focused on athletics rather than sportsman or winter wear. Unfortunately the location sucks as its in the far west GTA and a bit of a pain to get to. I talked to the assistant manager and she mentioned traffic was really slow and sited the location as a big issue. If this was in Vaughan or North York it would do very well. Good pricing and really impressive selection. My guess is the locations were chosen for their cheap leases to test the water vs a huge expensive lease that would come with a more central location. No matter what sporting goods is tough when you have Walmart and Canadian tire on the low end and tons of independents on the high end plus the very competitive SVP in the middle ground. Not a business I would want to wade into but interesting that Fairfax really like consumer facing franchises. They seem terrible but what do I know. I did my part and spent 350 beaver bucks on some Christmas swag for the fam and a beauty WC 26 Espana scarf for myself.

I did not expect such a ramp in forward gas pricing like this to happen this fast. Obviously the cold snap is responsible and by next summer we will be back to low gas prices. More importantly for anyone interested we get to see the cash flow potential of some of these companies. Most are hedged so the torque won't be fully apparent but we will now get a little look into future cash flows AECO sits just over 3 cad, it was negative this summer This little bump in prices will surely dissipate just as quickly as it arrived but the thing i'm banking on is that in 5-7 years time todays prices are the average and the lows and highs are meaningfully higher than the past couple years.

100% in agreement Gary. You said everything I wanted to say but better and more concise!

Lol, your point is taken but come on man! I am born and raised here, I just want Canada to be the best it can be, not just run away. I am also doing well and enjoying my life here. I'm talking about making life better for the people who are struggling by growing the pie instead of distributing the same pie. You can't distribute what has not been produced. Have you read Atlas Shrugged? give it go if not. You will see so many similarities to our current admin you may start to see my take.