Dinar

I am with you. I wanted to do this during the world cup in 2018, but my wife would not let me (we had a 2 year old and she was pregnant - she could not go, while she thought I'd come back with a girlfriend from there...) The country in incredibly beautiful both nature wise and architecture wise, while we are on the subject of regrets, I'd add Kiev, Palmyra & Damascus. I cannot wait for regime change in Iran - I would love to visit Isfahan, Shiraz, Persepolis, et all.

@MMM20, Look I own the stock, and I give Prem credit for the correct calls on the bond market, the building of the insurance business, and investments in India. If Prem is comfortable with venture capital - Digit, Tyke/Davos, etc.., then he is certainly comfortable with GARPY names or should be.

And they should be, however what is then the appropriate benchmark? In other words, how do you judge the performance of the portfolio?

O'k, wise guy, what has been the return on the equity & quasi equity portfolio over the past 5, 10, and 20 years and how does that compare with the S&P? Then adjust for the fact that Shawkei, Tyku/Davos Brands and Eurobank where way riskier investments than the S&P 500, and that Fairfax should have earned liquidity and risk premiums above the S&P.

Leverage in a bull market, coupled with a good insurance business.

I think the big risks are the northeast wind that Prem referred to (what is that by the way?), general major catastrophe - say massive earthquake in NY, 5-10% annual inflation that causes reserves to be inadequate, and lousy performance on the investment side. While everyone is cheering for Prem, I remain a skeptic on the investment side. (Tyku/Davos Brands, Shawkei, BDT, Blackberry - none of these were any good, and Eurobank was not exactly a home run.) Their equity and quasi-equity - BDT has massively underperformed S&P while taking much greater risk - Shawkei is clearly quite levered, so is Eurobank, and Tyku/Davos from what I heard, could be a mistake, was never profitable, and without a greater fool - Diageo could have been a zero.

I would make sure that this is not a PFIC for US tax purposes, if it is, you will probably bitterly regret getting involved.

No Clipper for you?

I don't know what Iran wanted or wants, but according to his obituary published by the Iranian press, the Iranian general who was killed planned the October 7th massacre. So if that is true, it is clear that Iran wanted a war with Israel or at least was fine with it.

You stated that Israelies are occupiers, and therefore they can be killed and raped with impunity. Using your logic, anybody in North America who is not 100% descendant of Indians should be murdered since they are all occupiers. Also, 100% of Turks must killed as well since they are on Greek and Armenian land. So do you support killing all Turks in Turkey and all 100% non American Indians in North America? If not, why do you support killing Jews but not other "occupiers"?

Israel is not the occupier, Jews have lived in Israel, Gaza, West Bank (Judea and Samaria) for three thousand years continuosly. Arabs came in 1600 years later. Do you also believe that Armenians and Greeks have the right to rape and murder every Turk in Turkey since Turks murdered two million of them in the 1910s-1920s and kicked the rest out? If you live in North America, or Australia, do you believe that Indians/Aborigines have the right to murder you in cold blood? If not, why not?

Since members of Hamas are included in that death toll, according to you they are clearly innocent. We get it. Hamas should be allowed to kill Israelis and Israelis are supposed to do nothing in response and cannot be allowed to defend themselves.

You are right, also Assyrians for that matter. Agree regarding Netanyahu and Ben Gvir.

I am probably mistaken, however if all Iran does is fire dozens of missiles and drones, then that's the least that one could have expected.

Israel did not attack an embassy, it attacked a building used by IRGC. Calling a military base a hospital does not make it so. Calling an IRGC base a consulate does not make it one. The war between Israel and Iran has been going on since 1982, if not earlier, when Iran started backing Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations. In 1992, Iran and Hezbollah bombed Israel's embassy in Buenos Aires. So Iran is not the aggrieved party here. Hmm, so Gaza was under Egyptian control until 1967, so Israel was committing genocide in Gaza since 1948? Israel left Gaza in 2005, was it committing genocide in Gaza in 2005, 2006, etc...? You have not explained how Israel is committing genocide now. If Israel was committing genocide, it would close all the aid points into Gaza. By the way, where was Gaza getting most of its drinking water in 2022 from? Actually Israel, actions of a country committing genocide?

Exactly what genoicidal acts is Israel committing? How is Iran defending itself? Iran has publicly stated that the killed general was involved in planning the October 7th massacre in Israel. Iran has funded Hamas and Hezbollah for decades. Iran is not exactly Poland in 1939. You need to brush up on your definition of genocide. If Israel was committing genocide, there would be no population in Gaza, instead population of Gaza is up several fold in the last 50 years. Also, in typical urban warfare, the civilian to military loss is 10 to 1, in Gaza it is roughly 3:2, and that if we believe Hamas figures, which do not stand up to statistical analysis.

@Cigarbutt, I agree re higher profit margins due to less competition. I do NOT own EQR and am I NOT suggesting that you or anybody else buy it.

@Cigarbutt, I think that there may be three other issues at play. Companies have gotten better at price discrimination/yield management software, which allows them to squeeze more revenue at 100% margin at very low and perhaps zero volume loss (airlines, concert tickets are good examples.) Companies may be more aggressive at raising pricing - look at historical price increases for aggregates for instance, and look at the last couple of years and 2024. IT investment has also probably allowed massive cost reductions. Company like EQR are pretty explicit about it, and I am sure that banks/airlines, etc... have also cut out plenty of costs.

@Cod Liver Oil, he is not.

I personally think that Ukraine should do the following: a) Raise cash via asset sales, both companies and real estate. I would buy an apartment in the heart of Kiev tomorrow if the price was right and it was available for sale. b) Raise cash via selling bonds to foreigners. There is a large Ukrainian diaspora that would buy bonds to support Ukraine, and I would buy it as well (most relatives/ancestors from Ukraine). Best case scenario - I get repaid, worst case scenario - I helped Ukraine in its hour of need and would get a tax write-off if the bond is defaulted on. c) Use the raised cash to recruit mercenaries & buy arms, and then having credibility negotiate peace.

So I should have bought it a year ago, but I still think it is cheap, and I finally decided to do it given all the insider buying. The quick version is that you have a business selling at half of the valuation of MLM or VMC. It has tremendous tail winds and incredible pricing power. The company is selling for 15x 2025 EPS, which I think the company will easily exceed. VMC is forecasting double digit price increase in the aggregates business and the company will probably be able to do the same. All the construction and repair is great for aggregates and cement, which company also produces. At p/e of 15, nothing is priced in: no above inflation price increases, no volume growth, no accretive acquisitions.

CRH

@Cigarbutt, I would do the following: a) Look at the most profitable companies in say 1999 and what were their EBIT margins b) Look at the most profitable companies in say 2023 and what were their EBIT margins? the most profitable in 2023 were probably MSFT, Alphabet, Meta which are all essentially monopolies or close to it. Also, Tech spend as a % of GDP probably doubled if not tripled since 1999, and tech companies have insane margins when well run - CRM, Intuit, etc...

Margins may have permanently increased because the composition of the market has changed. Software companies such as MSFT & monopolies/oligopolies such as Meta, Google, and V/MA are a very % of market, and they have very fat margins.

@Viking, I respectfully disagree. The returns quoted for ShawKei do not seem to be that great giving liquidity and risk involved. 12% annual return given risks and leverage since 2010 is not great, 3.5% since 2017 is incredibly bad. BDT is also unclear. What has been the IRR on the capital committed vs alternatives (private equity, S&P, private credit, etc...). Any investment made in 2009 should have doubled the money in a three year period, maximum 4.