Xerxes

I personally felt a great panic in the bottom of March 2020. Perhaps compounded by the unknown nature of the virus or near decapitation of my industry. Haven’t felt anything like it since. but i imagine if I was in Ukraine in 2022 and was an investor in the local stock exchange I would feel that 2020 like panic. being an ocean apart helps. Folks here are buying back Sberbank. I reckon that folks here are having an “easier time” to make a rational case to buy it (even with its foreign holding risk) than a local Russian buying it off the Moscow exchange (without the foreign holding risk)

Viking agreed on value creation. BUT this is like me getting a house, doing all kind of interesting renovation on it, adding value. But the house (with my taste of value-add) at the end needs to “valued” in the market place by the greater community (and my personal taste are irrelevant). for better or worse. A lot of value has been created in FIH, but “marketplace” has not cared for that structure. And this is not about not seeing a mispricing or etc. Prem hides it behind value being shunned away (disagree both Apple and MSFT were value trade 5-6 years ago), I say if you change the “menu” at your Restaurent you can get more customer. the only reason why I am still in FIH is the belief that the man who built a $15+ billion franchise knows more than me about the “Restaurent” business.

+1 well said, To be a bear in the tech-growth names, one must first have been a bull in the them at the certain point in time, IMHO. This is not his arena (and never will be) and that is totally fine.

Sad things is Ukraine was a nuclear armed nation in the 90s. Nuclear proliferation ain’t good for the world but it does serve you (an individual nation) well when confronting a bully superpower or regional power.

My uneducated guess is the inflationary pressure that we feel in North America & Europe (because we cannot get our gadgets fast enough) will be felt more globally at the most basic level. Egypt I think (for instance) is one of the largest importer of wheat. As well as so many other countries. as far as the stock market (besides the “news” impact when it happens). Who knows … this should be tailwind for defence industry but headwinds for others I tend to see war and pandemic in having the same impact (I.e need to build inventory, ration, duplicating infrastructure thus inflationary)

I meant “wheat” the commodity. not financial markets. A good quarter of global wheat production is from Ukraine and Russia.

So much talk of Ukraine impact on the market here in this thread, yet no one is talking about its potential impact on wheat

I need to buy printer ink for the occasion. I ran out. it is uncivilized (in my opinion) to read the letter on screen.

There is a narrow window before the spring thaw. But really who knows. Even foreign minister Lavrov doesn’t know what will be Putin’ final call

holding Barrick for a year now. good boost even if it is unrealized.

perhaps this could do in the meantime. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2022-02-16/icahn-on-fed-policy-activist-investing-and-mcdonald-s-video

Maybe there was a specific advantage for the two sellers to transact through a third-party (Fairfax) than a buyback through FIH.

Great news ! on a different note, Prem need to revise his shareholder letter to add in Shopify’ 18% plunge earlier today.

i actually disagree with that. Russian oil industry cost structure is ruble based, therefore there is an upper limit to that sweet spot before their cost starts to go up, re-start to compress their margins. Inversely the same helps them to buffer their margin in a downturn. I.e their cost goes down as the value of ruble depreciates with a falling oil price. Saudi Arabia doesn’t have that since their currency is dollar-pegged. So they really get hurt in a downturn but benefit immensely in an upside as their cost stays pinned against the dollar. lastly, big oil producers (contrary to popular belief) prefer fair price instead of high price, as “demand destruction” and “alternatives” plays a role in their calculus. smaller marginal oil producers like high prices as their “vision” is as short term as their capacity to produce.

it is on Disney+. That is where I saw it. part of the 20th Century Fox library and movie pipeline that Iger acquired. That is how it ended up there. I hope to see House of Gucci also on Disney+ soon.

you can either be long against 5,000 years of human history that involve rape, pillage, war, famine but also brought with it progress, peace, innovation, cures … or be short against it … betting that human nature is different that what it historically shown itself to be. I said this before in a different thread. We (most of us) are lucky (geographically) be living in North America with two vast oceans protecting us. But it does mean, however, that we do tend to do the espresso-sipping “ivory tower” thing.

I recommend The Last Dual by Riddly Scott (or is it duel). Always mixing up. available on Disney+ the movie has a really fun historical format that I think should be used more often. on different note.

Added to RTX and more importantly looks like Joey Levin added to MGM few days ago. They own now 14% of the company.

I would also recommend this. A lot of good content on commercial and aerospace market. You can skip the more technical episodes and focus on the business/market related episodes. I am subscribed to the print version of Aviation Week, for more than 10 years now. Great content.

Find it hilarious to see Americans opining on Russia’s geopolitical chessplay. Crimea needs to go back to the Khaghans of the Golden Horde. Sadly that entity no longer exists. aren’t these discussions ought to be in the Political section ? So that we don’t have to see/hear people’ skewed biases all the time.

Here is a great podcast on aerospace & defense that I usually follow

nothing to add on the conference call aside the question/comment by the Leucadia analyst, who seem to indicate that he actually personally own FFH shares. In the Q3 call, the same analyst mentioned that he also owns Atlas. I know they are the same person since they in both times comments were made about dividend increase. how could a sell-side analyst have personal ownership of the stock or associated stock (Atlas)??

se tables: REALIZED LONGS 2011: $703 million (equity) + $424 million (bond) 2012: $470 million (equity) + $566 million (bond) 2013: $1,324 million (equity) + $65 million (bond) 2014: $596 million (equity) + $103 million (bond) 2015: $818 million (equity) + $26 million (bond) 2016: ($184) million (equity) + $648 million (bond) 2017: $200 million (equity) + $419 million (bond) 2018: $1,326 million (equity) + $106 million (bond) 2019: $792 million (equity) + ($55) million (bond) 2020: $392 million (equity) + ($102) million (bond) 2021: $992 million (equity) + $338 million (bond) REALIZED SHORTS 2011: zero 2012: $6.3 million 2013: ($1.350) billion 2014: $13 million 2015: $126 million 2016: ($2.634) billion 2017: ($553) million (almost all of it in Q4 2017!) 2018: ($248) million 2019: ($20.7) million 2020: ($311+$542*) million *included Other which I believe are the TRS 2021: missed a lot could-have-been shorts (error of omission !!)

To me hyperinflation is when the moment you get a paycheck you need to spend it either on food or other assets, because your paycheck depreciates faster than the food that it buys does. Are we there, not one bit. Six-nine months out for now, things could look very different.