cwericb

"Even after Friday's spike, neither Fairfax nor Aecon look particularly expensive: " Fully agree with you LC. I also have a position in ATRL which I have had for a couple of years and it is atill doing pretty well and I also plan on holding onto it as well.

Well, days like Friday just don't come along often (if ever) and I have to admit that I am still somewhat in shock. I am just a little guy who doesn't profess to really know much stocks and essentially I just buy a few and rarely sell. My portfolio has just 19 stocks and Fairfax represents slightly over 50% of my holdings so a jump of 9% yesterday certainly made for a very good day. But my third largest holding after Fairfax and Royal Bank is Aecon Construction (ARE). Yesterday Aecon jumped 18.7%. Further contributing to a great day, were five of my other stocks that each gained in excess of 2% on a day when when the Toronto Stock Exchange was up less than half of one percent. So with a lot of good luck and much help from this board through the years, (Thank you all!!), I am up 46.25% so far in 2024. Fairfax is still looking pretty good and I have yet to sell a share since I made my initial purchase in 2007 at around $215. (Yes capital gains is going to kill me.) But what I don't understand is seeing board members share their portfolios here and notice some where Fairfax is not listed among their holdings. I mean not only does the name "Fairfax' appear in the very title of the board, but COBF must contain the most detailed and thorough examination of any company listed on the TSX. PS. In 2006 I had never bought a stock. But in looking for an investment, I stumbled on one of the predecessors of this board set up by Sanjeev. Followed it daily for about a year and by late 2007 jumped into Fairfax with both feet, so I owe a big, big Thank You to Sanjeev and fellow members here.

I know what you mean, but perhaps not completely meaningless in this case. Track record is important here as there are a lot of investors out there, that as soon as they hear "Fairfax" they think "Oh yeah, thats that Prem Watsa guy. Wasn't he the Blackberry guy? And wasn't there something about hedging a while back?" I don't know how many times over the past few years I have seen this come up in discussions about Fairfax. So I kinda think that pointing out that FFH is outperforming its peers certainly doesn't hurt in this case. JMHO

Just my 2 cents worth, but it looks like Kirk and Leslie are headed north towards Europe and should settle down before doing any serious damage. Also, a serious hurricane in November would be somewhat of a rarity, however waters are warmer. Since hurricanes are now travelling further north, if we can just get a hard frost it will take a lot of the leaves off the trees and that would considerably reduce damage, plus a lot of the weaker trees have already fallen from previous hurricanes. The optimistic view.

TSX as of Oct. 02/2024 Fairfax Financial................. FFH.............. 52.76% Royal Bank......................... RY ................ 12.27% Altius Minerals.....................ALS ................ 4.68% Aecon Group...................... ARE ................4.63% Terravest Industries.............TVK................ 4.15% Stelco Holdings...................STLC ..............4.00% AtkinsRealis Group............. ATRL.............. 3.38% Berkshire Hathaway............ BRK.B ............2.44% Suncor Energy.................... SU...................2.06% Fairfax India........................ FIH.U..............1.98% Clarke Inc............................CKI ................ 1.91% Fortis Inc..............................FTS................1.23% Generac Holdings............... GNRC ...........1.08% Whitecap Resources ...........WCP ............ 0.73% Cenovus Energy.................. CVE ............. 0.69% Crescent Point.....................CJ................. 0.64% Saputo Inc...........................SAP............... 0.58% Cleveland-Cliffs...................CLF............... 0.35% Think I'm up around 36% 2024 to date. Dividends will add another 2% by end of year.

What truly amazes me is the number of members of CBOF who DO NOT own shares in Fairfax. Have often seen people share their portfolios and FFH is missing. Head scratcher for me.

Well, hurricane season runs June 1 to November 30 so we are well past the halfway point. This year it was predicted that we would see above normal hurricane activity, but that has yet to happen. (There is already a thread here specifically devoted to this.) Living on the Canadian East coast and having lived through both Hurricane Dorion and Hurricane Fiona in the past five years one tends to track these things fairly carefully. If we can just get by for another month or so we should be good for this year. When one finds that "Hurricane Alley" has moved north to include the island on which you live AND your largest investment is Fairfax, hurricanes do tend to get your attention.

Viking asked "But how many board members actually invested in Fairfax in 2020? Or 2021? Or 2022? Or 2023?" Perhaps there are a fair number of board members like myself who have passed on the opportunity to buy more Fairfax shares simply because we have watched our present shares grow in value to a point where Fairfax now form an increasingly larger and larger percentage of our stock portfolios. Personally I am slightly over 50%. However, as a small investor, I might be more tempted to add if shares would split to a more reasonable price per share. For instance a ten for one split would reduce share price to around the level of Canadian banks. JMHO

Putting things in perspective, here is a 20 year chart of Fairfax share price verses the Toronto Stock Exchange for the past 20 years. Factor in FFH yearly dividends and the company has done pretty well for long term shareholders over the years compared to the Canadian market in general.

The best way to get a feel for the details of the Fibrek deal would be to scan through some of the posts on the board at the time https://thecobf.com/forum/search/?q=fibrek&quick=1&updated_after=any&sortby=relevancy&search_in=titles

Yes you are correct in that, my bad, but it was Prem calling the shots. If I remember correctly there was a lot more to this whole mess than meets the eye. But I have a lousy memory and can't be bothered to read all the old posts on the matter so I will let the court judgments speak for themselves.

Re: Fibrek takeover, it seems pretty simple: 1) Shareholders of Fibrek took Fairfax to court because Fairfax underpaid shareholders. 2) The initial Court ruling found that Fairfax should have paid shareholders 100% more than they paid. 3) The appeal court found that Fairfax should have paid 60% more then Fairfax paid. 4) Not one, but two courts both found that Fairfax substantially underpaid Fibrek shareholders - and NOT by small percentages. Bottom line, Fairfax grossly underpaid shareholders for their shares and that to me, seems neither Fair nor Friendly. For some background: https://thecobf.com/forum/search/?q=fibrek&quick=1&updated_after=any&sortby=relevancy&search_in=titles

TVK

Like your way of thinking. Too overweight in FFH but looking for a chance for more TVK.

Share price down $150 in 2 days. Good thing we had a decent quarter. Not the first time Fairfax released good results on a crappy market day. Sucks. Oh well who knows where the bottom is in this market. Be embarrassing if Brett Horne and Carson Block turn out to be - never mind, lets not go there.