Xerxes

between the x-dividend date late next week and the Q4 results in mid-Feb, some steam should come off, as flippers move on greener pastures

Thanks for your thoughts, certainly GE Aviation has been an incredible company with the reach and the moat they have had. Great company, means great people. My comment was mostly about the corporate level of GE. The Alstom deal was almost comical. Reading this book, it make me really appreciates what we have with Berkshire Hathaway. I have every trust in Greg Abdel, but I hope Buffett's shadow won't imped him like Welch's shadow impeded Immelt. I would be a buyer of GE Aviation stock once it spins of Healthcare and Power (*cough* Alstom *cough*).

There might be a bias thing, where folks do not want to think in terms of a possible scenario (however improbable) where everything they built over the years goes out and the only thing remaining would be Bitcoin. The question is: is Miller's outsized position a reflection of his belief that there would be an economic catastrophe, where all he needs is Bitcoin and Amazon Prime deliveries, or just that there is more upside at least in the short term b/c he sees no correlation with the interest rate cycle, which would be putting pressure on other risk-on assets in 2022-23.

Very well said TwoCC on what we should ask ourselves. For clarity i dont think he is 50% on BTC directly, i think he has a lot of ecosystem-like plays (MSTR or miners) involving BTC as well as the actual coin as per his comment in this interview. There is another interview he did with author William Green that folks might find it interesting. It is on his website. On interest rate, i see BTC different today than 2017. Today's it is being marketed as institutional-grade "digital gold" as "inflation hedge" on the back of Covid-induced easy money. 5 years ago it was a "payment alternative", and prior to that it was a "be free from Government" product and i imagine the narrative will switch to something else in 2025. Like someone said, it is solution looking for a problem, and slowly but surely reaching escape velociy. That said, in the short term, I feel that between something like Ether and Bitcoin, the one that has a "inflation hedge" narrative will have more headwinds because its raison d'etre was to be the "sound money" while the Fed was on the rage on the printing press, which no longer will be the case in 2022-23.

If Bitcoin can survive the higher interest rate and a period of quantitative tightening, than it is made.

I didn't know his legacy that well. may he rests in peace

Was not sure where to put this interview. Something we hear often, how after every downturn, when the Fed raise rate the economy buckles at lower and lower rate. (ala Q4 2018, when the whole thing started to warp). Making the case that in 2022-23, Fed can only raise rate perhaps 4x 0.25, before the market start to cough. Not that it is Fed's job to keep the stock market afloat, but just using the stock market as a proxy of the overall sentiment. And i think this has been the core belief of the Bitcoin community that notwithstanding 2022-23 where the rate will increase, the Fed would have no choice to circle back. (ala Japan) ... unless if there is a powerful independent Fed that could engineer a recession and let the market fall where it may.

Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric: Gryta, Thomas, Mann, Ted: 9780358250418: Books - Amazon.ca I work for one of General Electric' competitor, and I was always fascinated how no matter what GE did (good or ill), they always make it to the front page, and that was not the case for its competitors. It was all about the lingering Welch' mystique. I really enjoyed reading this book. Was familiar with the story but it was a pleasant read and connecting all the dots. Reading this book, you really grasp how an institution can bury itself under massive layers of fat, unable to move and dislodge itself, while everyone just squeeze as much milk as they can from it, while they can. Contrast that with Berkshire with the CEO owning +20% of the stock and 99% of his own wealth. I will be also reading the one Jeff himself wrote. Very soon.

Speaking of crime series, one of the best one i have seen is "Shetland" set in Scotland, UK On Netflix

Here is an analogy when it comes to making forecast: Walt Disney in 2012 bought Lucasfilm. But the rights of the original six movies would remain with Fox until 2020, while Walt Disney owned future releases etc. Weirdly enough, Fox actually had perpetual ownership of Episode 4. So you could imagine that in 2012, there were a whole host of Hollywood / Wall Street analysts opining on these details, that how Fox would probably retain is perpetual ownership of Episode 4 etc after 2020. Of course the one thing no one see coming was that Walt Disney bought Fox, and that the Murdoch family became one of the largest Walt Disney shareholders. I think the same thing applies to everything. People do macro forecast all the time, but there is always something much bigger outside one's sandbox that re-shapes, but really is un-forecastable.

Agreed with the comment that the next one will rarely looks the same. Think of all the TV commentary, majority of which saw mid-March/April 2020 as the first leg (Ala Lehman Oct 2008) with the real bottom in March 2009. Or all the value investors that sat on their hands because it needs to play out like the dot.com right away in 2020. As oppose to see it as a 1987 like drawdown. To her credit, Kathie was one of the ones that made the bold case for the latter. I always tell my friend, just like in the morning you would never know that you will have a bad car accident that day, you are not going to see the drawdown come in and that we had only three since the mid-1980s. =>. 1987, 2008 and 2020. I don’t not include Dot.com since in my book it was the market rolling over 2 years. Just one big bear market and not a drawdown that takes everything down (including the kitchen sink)

We are overthinking this: For all we know the Daily Journal Alibaba buys could be closing of his very successful shorts on the name as he rode it down from $317 to where it is today. The reason they appear as long position, is because the shorts were initiated against HK 9988, so you don't see it as they are not need to be disclosed by SEC, but in grand scheme of things they are offsetting each other, with the net between them left as profit. On a more positive side, this episode got to be ammunition for finance/investment podcast re-hashing it over and over again.

That is why i never bother with these things. At least you got your core FFH / BRK position that is benefitting from all this, if not the actual trade in isolation.

well said Dazel, and happy new year

Found this to be pretty funny with Munger at the end of the clip. Was looking for some background on their investment in silver back in the late 90s, found this.

Happy New Year All !!

Both were AMAZING ...

I did calculation in about 40 min or so, hopefully no mistakes. Not exactly market beating against S&P500 .. but I suppose there is no price for all the stuff that I am learning. ---------------- TFSA = 11% (i.e. most speculative positions are located here, which deflated in Q4) RRSP = 23% TFSA/RRSP Combined = 20% (i.e. RRSP is much larger than TFSA, so it pulled up the average) Crypto = 46% (i.e. due to Ethereum mostly) TFSA/RRSP Combined + Crypto = 22% (i.e. small 200 basis lift as Crypto is a small allocation)

I could not find a thread for this, so just created one. If anyone has any ideas/take on this topic please park it over here in this thread. There are two platforms that i could find on this topic: (Vinovest.co) and Cult Wine, where they keep custody of the goods on your behalf etc. If anyone has used them, please drop a note, Looking for that alternative asset that is not securitized as a diversification tool (aside real-estate and crypto)

well done sir, you and other helped Prem vacuum up 2 million shares. And are componsated acoordingly. Happy Holidays --------------------------- 23,017,184 outstanding shares (pre-Allied World purchase) 26,100,817 outstanding shares (post-Allied World purchase) 24,986,170 common + 1,548,000 multiple voting shares => As of 12/24/2021 press release Unsure, if the outstanding share # from 2016 and 2017 include the multiple voting shares or not. I believe they are. Either way, suffice to say that a good chunk of stock dilution used to fund the Allied World purchase has been bought back below where it was issued. I believe those were issued at above BV and 2 million of those (2/3 of the lot) were bought back at 0.8-0.9 or so. Hell, maybe Bloomstran can write a chapter, how FFH strategically issued overvalued stock at close to BV and bought them off below BV.

I have not tendered anything in my RRSP But to think of it i should have bought additional ones in my TFSA for that sole purpose only, but was somewhat fully vested there and didnt want the tax headache of outside TFSA. I will probably tender my FIH if there is a second opportunity. Nothing to do with the sub-holdings that make up the NAV (which I like), rather the fact that it seems to me the only entity that benefits from FIH's situation is FFH. Anyone wanting to have a generic India exposure are better served buying an India-specific MSCI index. If there is a desire to have a specific exposure that can be bought directly from India's stock exchange, and even the airport at some point will be publicly traded. So what purpose or mission objective is FIH catering too? surely its mission objective is not to create an illiquid stock so that it parent company can benefit indirectly through increase ownership. But that is where we are now, even if that was not the intent. it is worth asking, is there precedence where the fees could now be changed or slightly changed to reward FFH to narrowing the discount. Not in their direct benefit, but then again was the mission objective of FIH to create and an illiquid stock with a perma-discount or have a BIP/BEP like structure, where it would pull that incremental dollar looking for exposure to India to itself. Of course, all that could change, if the model changes to something other than a holding company with a NAV. It is just hard to see the catalyst, which was not the case for FFH proper.

Happy Holidays all, Best wishes to everyone and their loved ones

I heard a wiseman say on Bloomberg Radio that S&P500, all it is, it's a tracker on Fed's balance sheet.

No worries folks. You will get the full list of growthy-tech @ their 52-weeks lows in Fairfax 2021's Police Report (sorry I mean letter to FFH shareholders) coming out in Feb 2022.