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NormR

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Posts posted by NormR

    Fairfax betting on demography?

    in Fairfax Financial

    Posted

    Fairfax has held Arbor for as long as I can recall; probably close to 15 years.  Arbor owns and has recently built numerous multi story facilities in Toronto.  Graveyards gone vertical.

     

    Beware,... we might soon get some free Halloween-like graveyard tour at next years AGM  ;D

     

    LOL

     

    [Ah,... just kidding of course,... but I can recall Peter Lynch also made a fortune buying into the funeral and cemetery business Service Corp, which had no analyst coverage. Dull names, dull products, dead industry - Lynch loved simple mundane, colorless businesses.

     

    It has taken a while, but I've made a silly multiple from Service in recent years.  :)

    What Does "Lifetime Member" Mean?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I sent a small donation, if that can help. Thank you Sanjeev for your good work.  Maybe one time a year you can ask for donation.

     

    I think reminding people of the donation option once in a while is a great idea. It doesn't even have to be done by Sanjeev. I'll set up a calendar reminder :)

     

    I agree that a way must be found to stop the spam. The fee would work, though I suspect that $1 would work as well as $50 (spammers will never ever pay anything, and if they are stupid enough to do and give you their real email/name via Paypal, you just ban them as soon as they spam and keep their money, and report them to their ISP). But better spam-catchers OR getting trusted volunteers to do some admin duties would also work. Most really popular forums end up with a team of admins/moderators, so it would probably be a normal evolution here to delegate some tasks.

     

    Just food for thoughts.

     

    Good ideas. 

     

    Perhaps a hybrid?  A one time fee for newbies plus quarterly donation drives, sort of like PBS?

    What Does "Lifetime Member" Mean?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I get some 400+ membership registrations a month, and only about 30-60 are legitimate.  The rest are robot spam registrations and I'm spending an inordinate amount of time filtering them.  I have a spam filter and CAPTCHA built-in, but that only catches about a third.  So along with just normal monitoring, hosting, and support service, I'm spending a ton of time weeding out memberships

     

    I was wondering how bad the spam was here.  Your experience seems to match up with what I've heard from other sites.  :(

     

    I suspect that even a small fee will get rid of most of the spam.

    Cloning Ideas from FFH/BRK

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    As a followup to the copycat investing thread, if you had to pick 1 to 3 stocks that are currently held by Fairfax, and a similar number from Berkshire Hathaway, which ones would be your top picks? 

     

    (I'm going with "cloning" instead of "copycatting" because Mohnish used it in his talk that was linked a few days ago.  Oh, feel free to add a few picks from Mohnish too :) )   

    EMH alive and well?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Yes, it's alive but not very well IMHO.  Problem with the EMH is that it isn't totally falsifiable.  (It has to be married to a pricing model and so only joint tests can be made.)  As a result, it is hard to kill.  However, ask anyone who likes it to explain the persistence of momentum which trivially violates the weak form of EMH.  I've yet to get anything close to a clear response to that question.  (I'd have pointed them to value but a bunch of EMHers seem to have tried to appropriate value investing for themselves without so much as a mention of Ben Graham.  :o)   

    Copycat investing

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I was reading In Praise of Copycats, which reminded me of Mohnish Pabrai's talk and thought I should take a more disciplined attitude to copying good investment ideas.  So, I've a few questions for you.

     

    Which portfolio managers to do follow with an eye to swiping their ideas?

     

    When looking at the portfolios of said managers, how do you narrow down the list to the best few stocks/securities?

     

    What sorts of things should you keep an eye out for when copycat investing?

     

    Any other wisdom on the topic would be appreciated.  :)

     

    Blind Evaluation #2

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    4) Typically I'll ignore estimates on growth future stats unless they are lower.  In this case, they are not expected to be lower, so that's a plus (or I guess not a negative, to put it better).

     

    Strikes me that one should discount the estimates to account for analyst enthusiasm.  I forget the current average rate, but by about 10%?  (They also seem to have a problem identifying big jumps.)

    Blind Evaluation #1

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    It's not a bad idea at all.  You'd just not stop there in real life. 

     

    The idea is to start by excluding all of the intangibles and coming to a guesstimate of value without being influenced by the intangibles/qualitative.  Then do it again with everything.  As a result, you put a price on the squishy factors.

     

    It is also a good idea to avoid looking at stock price to avoid being anchored by it.  At least initially. 

     

    So, overall, not a bad idea. IMHO.

     

    Added:  Might be a fun interview tool too.  Better than some of the crazy Fermi question stuff that infects tech interviews.

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