cwericb

Question? Anyone know how many board members do we have now?

" I've changed the features so that members cannot delete their own threads." 1) Until this subject arose I wasn't aware that a poster could delete threads. I wholehartedly agree that we should not have the power to do this as a person could start a thread and not even participate in it and then for whatever reasons, delete everyone's valuable participation. 2) It would also be nice to tone down the personal attacks. Surely we are all grown up enough that we as a group can avoid this. Certainly we will often disagree and see things differently. That is the value of the board. There are always more than one view of a subject. I WANT to see the pro's and con's so I can help make up my own mind with some decent information. Also when we present our own opinions we should all be open to other views. I would never be so arrogant as to think my view was the only correct one. I certainly have the right to defend my view and disagree with others, but not in such a way as to personally attack anyone. You guys are all brighter than that and I only wish I had a fraction of the knowledge and expertise that is shown by many members of this board.

Well said Sanjeev. We all appreciate the work you do to facilitate this meeting place. After constantly following this board and its predecessor for 4 or 5 years now, it is funny how one starts to recognize the personalities associated with the various user names on this forum. I feel that I know some of the people here almost as well as I know as people I see every day. I often regret that board members don't provide a short bio and perhaps a picture.

Point taken. I don't often check out the (3) comments so I may have taken your comments out of context.

ValueCarl you are one of the more outspoken members and that's fine, I have no objection to that, but your attack on Bronco is a little over the top and unecessary. We all can get a little carried away at times and you might want to use the edit feature on your comments about his kids as I am sure the 'monster' remark that he made was in jest. As has been said in previous posts, Sanjeev has the power to turf anyone who gets really obnoxous and has done so. What I could really use though is a spell checker rather than an ignore button.

"Why subject me to your views on whether I have to read other's views?" If you are not interested in other views why would you read this thread or the board for that matter? Isn't that the whole idea behind a message board - to exchange views?

Alpha 23 posted while I was writing this and I pertty well echo what he says. I say no, at least at this point. I very much value everyone's opinion. Particularly when there are discussions about a particular company and some members like the company and state their reasons, then the detractors raise their own points and questions. I don't know about everyone else, but this is what I value most about this board. It is a balance that I have trouble finding in the press or other boards. If there are members or comments I want to ignore I am capable of doing that myself. As the saying goes ' Opinions are like a**holes, everybody's got one'. I like to see both sides of the coin and even the dumbest person can sometimes come up with a view I haven't considered. Also, some may consider some of the humour or wit that is displayed by certain members to be frivolous, but personally I quite enjoy most of it.

"If they continue to buy shares, perhaps they will start to think MORE like shareholders and start paying us a portion of our income. " Agreed, and you would think that those options they own would give them incentive to get the share price up as well. However, in their defense, they have access to a lot more information than we do and there is hope that perhaps they are following an agenda that looks good to them, but may be a little more long term that we would like. They said they had plans to improve the results from the RBK plants and NBSK prices have been running in a pretty good range for quite a while now. I also saw somewhere (here?) where chip prices have dropped, so it will be interesting to see the results of the first quarter. You would also think that FFH would be keeping tabs on what is going on within the company and perhaps they also are looking at it with a more long term view as well. The concern there is what happens if NBSK prices start to decline? With the pressure on commodity prices this week it will be interesting to see if there is a dip in the NBSK price on Tuesday. You know, back when it was first announced that 2012 date for the power generation used to seem like such a long way off. But now it doesn't seem like so far away.

Seems that for the last couple of years there has been a run up in share price prior to quarterly earnings release. Then the market would be unimpressed with the results and the price would drop - sometimes substantially. This time, however the price has been slipping for the past week as we wait for the earnings release in a couple of weeks. Perhaps the reverse will happen when the results are released this time for a change. javascript:void(0);

LONGUEUIL, QC, May 4 /CNW Telbec/ - Fibrek (TSX: FBK) will release its 2011 first quarter results after market hours on Wednesday, May 18, 2011. President and Chief Executive Officer, Pierre Gabriel Côté, and Patsie Ducharme, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, will host a conference call on Thursday, May 19, 2011 at 8:30 a.m. (Eastern Time) to discuss financial results.

Agree 100% with Crip. I was brought up to believe that "constructive criticism" is always valuable information and I never cease to be amazed at people who get insulted or offended over helpful advice. It may not always be correct, it may not always be complementary, but it is always useful to see what others think of you or your operation. It involves thinking outside the box. If you are involved in managing a corporation like FFH or some of the other companies mentioned on this board that Sanjeev has built, where a high percentage of the board members are very astute and intelligent investors (not me), it must provide a valuable source of commentary that reflects shareholder's view your operations. It is reassuring to know that FFH management are receptive and interested in outside ideas and criticisms involving their operations.

Yikes! I hereby retract anything uncomplimentary that I have ever said here. Seriously though, just from the timing of some things that have happened I think that there are some other company execs (FBK?) that also must keep an eye on what is said on this board. Kudos to them for at least listening to other opinions.

Here is some more info on Pabrai/FBK http://canadianinsider.com/coReport/allTransactions.php?ticker=fbk

tombgrt You are correct of course. But if a broker wants to see an overview of Fairfax, he would likely go to Fairfax's site. There is nothing 'wrong' with the Fairfax site, it is just not all it could be. The sites you quoted are examples.

I’m not trying to be argumentative, but I think some may have missed my point. Sure the site is functional, yes it seems informative, and no doubt it provides the information required by investors. But it definitely lacks on the presentation side. Fairfax is a big, worldwide company and it wouldn't hurt them to present a polished, attractive and interesting website. It is not just investors who are looking at this site, but it is the impression that it gives to brokers who sell their products and individuals and companies who purchase insurance. Today a corporate website is a major form of advertising. Like it or not, consumers tend to judge a company by the by their presence in the media - be it newspaper ads, radio copy, TV spots or a corporate website. What concerns me about this very lackluster website is that it raises a question about the competency of their public relations and marketing people. If they don’t realize the importance of the image they present on the web it doesn’t instill much faith in their abilities. For those of us who have discussed this regarding Fibrek's site, FBK progressed from essentially a non-functional site to the very nice site they have today. There is nothing “wrong” with the site, it is just a lot less than what it could be. Perhaps this is a work in progress and we will see some improvements in the coming weeks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...“How come those that are complaining about it aren't howling about BRK's website, or Leucadia?”... Jeez guys, don't get me started on them too! Just kidding. I don’t own them so it’s not really my place to comment. But just because there are other unattractive sites out there is not much of an excuse. I suspect all of these companies are attempting to present a formal type of site, but formal doesn't have to be plain and boring.

It is all perception. They say you can't judge a book by its cover - but many do. Impressions are important. If you are going to invest with someone or meeting with a real estate salesman and when they meet you for the first time you see them driving a beat up old car and are dressed in a sloppy manner, it doesn't make a very good impression. I don't care who you are or what you are selling (insurance or investments) it is always important to put forth a good impression. As someone once said " A shiny red apple will always sell better than a dull green one."

Pulp holding steady at $1,013.

Boring, unimpressive and a little amateurish. Surely a company like FFH can do better. It always concerns me about a company's marketing compentecy when something like this comes out. Reminds me of FBK who did this but later came out with quite a polished presentation. Perhaps FFH's site is just unfinished - looks like that anyway.

Smazz, -- Thanks for the kind words & everyone is welcome come to PEI. We were very lucky to have escaped the recession almost completely on PEI with the main exception being the fishing industry. But there's a plus side to that... Last spring you could buy 3, one pound cooked lobsters for $13.99 and I expect much the same this year. So you might want to come sooner than later! Re: Housing. In December 2010 CREA forecast sales on PEI to be down in 2011 by 11%. If that is true, no one seems to have told the construction industry. We are involved and are seeing our usual steady increases. Every year we wonder where all the people come from, but the houses seem to keep selling.

Hahaha - I'm not seeing that ad & what is showing on my screen is... "Hangover Cure Review Hangover Cures Reviewed Drink And Feel Fine The Next Day www.hangovercuresreview.com" ...seems "Sober College" has given up on us and someone else thinks we may need help??

Interesting thing we are seeing around here. With today’s communications and convenient air travel, people are to realize that they no longer have to live in the large centres. For example, on Prince Edward Island we see more and more people moving here to avoid those insane housing prices, high crime rates, and long commute times. I live three minutes from work, the city centre, two golf courses, two marinas and a beautiful beach are all just five minutes away. Yes, we have a murder every year or so - usually a domestic situation. But for the price of a forty year old bungalow in Vancouver you can own a luxury waterfront home. Recently we had a tech firm move here and re-locate all their entire staff. Companies like Investco-Trimark, CGI, and Ceridian have all set up major centres here recently. With New York, Boston, Detroit, Montreal and Toronto just a couple of hours away by air and fibre optic internet service cable becoming widely available, more people are finding they can work and run businesses from here just as efficiently and much more inexpensively than they can in the large centres. The bottom line is that there comes a point where some areas will simply price themselves out of the market. When you have a huge disparity in housing prices between different areas of the same country things are going to tend to level off because eventually people will realize that many businesses no longer have to be tied to large, overpriced centres.

But by definition, wouldn't you expect the price of stocks rise to keep pace with inflation? And with the same thought, cash becomes devalued.

Diet - Not the answer Exercise - Not the answer The answer is simple - Diet + Exercise The hard part is willpower.

Pulp prices are now $992.79 U$ for NBSK. I believe that RBK follows the price of NSKB so on the subject of RBK I thought the following was interesting. I don't know how accurate or up to date these figures are but it gives some idea of the value of recycling paper. While FBK's U.S. plants may not yet be profitable today there is no question that there will be increasing pressure put on the public, government and business to recycle paper. To my mind, that is a given. And as more waste paper comes in to the system, the cheaper it should become. As that occurs, those RBK plants are going to look more valuable as time goes on. And I believe they account for 48% of the U.S. RBK capacity. To produce each week's Sunday newspapers, 500,000 trees must be cut down. Recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees. If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year! If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save about 25,000,000 trees a year. If you had a 15-year-old tree and made it into paper grocery bags, you'd get about 700 of them. A busy supermarket could use all of them in under an hour! This means in one year, one supermarket can go through over 6 million paper bags! Imagine how many supermarkets there are just in the United States!!! The average American uses seven trees a year in paper, wood, and other products made from trees. This amounts to about 2,000,000,000 trees per year! The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years. Approximately 1 billion trees worth of paper are thrown away every year in the U.S. Americans use 85,000,000 tons of paper a year; about 680 pounds per person. The average household throws away 13,000 separate pieces of paper each year. Most is packaging and junk mail. In 1993, U.S. paper recovery saved more than 90,000,000 cubic yards of landfill space. Each ton (2000 pounds) of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4000 kilowatts of energy, and 7000 gallons of water. This represents a 64% energy savings, a 58% water savings, and 60 pounds less of air pollution! The 17 trees saved (above) can absorb a total of 250 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air each year. Burning that same ton of paper would create 1500 pounds of carbon dioxide.

Nonub... "I read once that within 10 years of winning a large payout in the lottery, a large percentage of winners have spent the vast majority of the money or are completely broke." Funny you should mention that. Years ago I knew a carpenter who won $1,000,000 in a lottery when a million was a million and interest rates were in the 15%+ range. Rather than investing the money and living on the $150-$200,000 yearly interest, he squandered the money on renovations to his house in a very low rent district, bowed to pressure put on him by his "friends" to pay off their mortgages, bought all his kids 4-wheelers and cars, etc. About 10 years later he was broke. However I still think that spreading the money around would be of greater benifit in general. If nothing else, some of that money would filter down into numerous smaller communities where it really would make a difference. Turar - I know what you mean, but things are a bit different here in Canada as usually the full amount is paid out and I think it is tax exempt.