cwericb

Bought a Kia Telluride SX Limited one year ago. Probably worth more today than what I paid for it in March 2021. Excellent vehicle that competes well with SUV's by Volvo, Land Rover, etc for thousands less. The first problem is finding one and some dealers have been charging thousands over MSRP. Kia has never been able to keep up with demand. It was introduced in 2019 and is still rated as the top seven seater by Car & Driver or Motor Trend. This is my second Kia SUV and zero complaints. A Kia/Hyundai advantage is that they use a higher grade of steel - helps when you are the only car maker that produces its own steel.

Sometimes it is interesting to see how others (non COBF members) see Fairfax. Here is an article from Seeking Alpha. “Fairfax Financial Holdings: Further Growth Possible, But Catastrophe Losses Pose A Challenge” https://seekingalpha.com/article/4488164-fairfax-financial-holdings-further-growth-possible-catastrophic-losses-pose-challenge?mailingid=26752043&messageid=2800&serial=26752043.1154&utm_campaign=rta-stock-article&utm_medium=email&utm_source=seeking_alpha&utm_term=26752043.1154 While it seems that the writer doesn’t quite grasp how a P&C insurance company operates, but I thought some might find it interesting. Certainly Cat losses and inflation are a concern but one would assume that Fairfax is well aware of that and accounts for it in its premiums. Glad to see a number of CBOF members responded to the article.

Haha I saw that and was thinking WTF? What, how, am I seeing things? Now that I have my breath back, I wonder how embarrassed SA will be over this? Perhaps this headline will produce a great buying opportunity tomorrow AM? Wishful thinking I'm sure

Ditto. I am in the same position, I keep telling myself to be satisfied and look for other opportunities but ...

P.E.I. is the smallest, but most densely populated province in Canada. However, the province must be doing something right. The U.S. death rate for Covid is 254.88 deaths per 100,000 population. PEI's population is 165,000 so if we apply the US death rate to that population (254.88x1.65) = 420 deaths. To date PEI's total covid deaths are 0. Safest place in North America?

My largest holding as well. Management has been doing very well recently and as far as some of FFH's more controversial holdings are concerned let’s give the team some more space. We may criticize some of the holdings, but surely the management team at Fairfax are in a position to know a lot more about those business than those of us here. While we may feel frustrated at an apparent lack of progress at Blackberry and other holdings, one would think that Fairfax management know considerably more than any of us. My main criticism of Fairfax is that I feel Prem Watsa’s ego has too much impact on the share price. You almost never see a headline saying “Fairfax did this or that”, it is always “Prem Watsa does...” Or “Prem Watsa’s Fairfax .....”. I think it would help if there was more emphasis put on the whole management team that runs the company rather than give the impression that Fairfax is one person. JMHO.

Nothing spectacular, but with a gain of 33.88% I am quite satisfied. I had three oil stocks that produced 400-500%. Unfortunately they were very small holdings. SNC, a relatively recent addition was my only loser of 17 stocks and I hold out high hopes for it

So let’s see if I have this right. Increasing catastrophic weather events, rising prices for materials and labour, combined with oncoming inflation, insurance premiums must rise to cover those factors. So like most businesses, profit is a function of cost, ie if I sell a widget for $3.00 and my margin is 33% I make $1.00. But if my cost increases to $6.00 and margin is still 33% I now make $2.00 for selling the same widget. Assuming that insurance functions in a similar manner, rising insurance premiums to cover pay outs should result in increased profits? I realize the above is a rather simplistic view, but as long as premiums rise in advance of rising pay outs, then the future of the insurance business looks quite profitable, assuming it doesn’t become unaffordable?

Well someone had to start it. Wondering about the impact climate change will have on the insurance industry over 2022 and the next few years. Not only are we having more weather related incidents, but those events are becoming more and more severe. Floods, fires, and winds all seem to be setting records every month. We are in a hard market, but is this an indication of the industry preparing for anticipated increased future claims? If so, would that indicate increased premiums are not funding increased profits but simply funding increased claims in the future.

Are you perhaps confusing Alkaline batteries with standard carbon batteries? The biggest difference I have found between different brands of alkaline batteries is that Duracells are often considerably more expensive, but they don't seem to last any longer than other brands that cost a lot less.

One would think that the overhead in eliminating or reducing a company's office space would be quite substantial. What is overlooked is the social aspect of not having people congregate in offices. For instance, how many people meet their future spouses at an office? However, society changes. What we are seeing today as Covid seems to be easing, is that these people have been working from home for almost two years are quitting rather then returning to the office. This may create a situation where employers have little choice but to allow employees to work from home if they want to retain talented workers.

Just got off the phone with my son who has an insurance agency in Calgary. He no longer has the expense of maintaining an office as he and his agents now are able to work from their homes and do much of their work online. He has also been able to set up an agency in Toronto and other areas without the expense of having to maintain offices. He can also live pretty well wherever he chooses. The idea of working from home is nothing new but Covid restrictions have proven to millions that they can do this quite successfully. Depending on how widespread his shift turns out to be, it could have a major impact not only on office space, but also on residential real estate in cities. Here on the East Coast we are experiencing a major influx of immigration from other parts of the country as these people no longer feel that they have to live in large cities close to their offices.

Yes I think the 9% was probably was speculation. And yes, I doubt that OMERS sees Fairfax as a charity. Nice jump in FFH share price today.

Did I read somewhere a few weeks ago that it was 9%? Or am I imagining that?

Rarely see a "For Sale" sign around here any more, and when you do it usually has "SOLD" plastered across it.

RBC yesterday.

There was a thread here about how the housing bubble was about to burst. Numerous posters echoed the above sentiments. Sell. Don't buy, rent. Prices have to come down soon. That was seven or eight years ago. How has worked out so far? The world population in the mid 1970's was 4 billion. Today it is 8 billion. Don’t ignore the law of supply and demand. People gotta live somewhere.

I think the original theory was simply that he would share profits on the same scale as every other shareholder, although he certainly has a few more shares than I do. I don't find much about Fairfax that does to be 'normal' though.

In his defense, Prem's salary from Fairfax has been set at $600,000/year for decades. Considering that he is founder, chairman and CEO of a rather large conglomerate, his salary looks pretty paltry compared to others in that position. The fact that he gets dividends from the shares that owns ... well, so do we.

While that seems reasonable, I doubt we will see anything change in the foreseeable future.

I believe the theory behind that was that Prem was on a low (relatively) fixed salary and instituting a dividend would provide him with a substantial income that would ensure his salary was in line with what other shareholders received. However, that doesn't seem to be a reason for not increasing the dividend other than the fact that some might criticize him for increasing his own income.

Haha. Rum runnin has long been a Maritime tradition. Friend of mine's grandfather was a very well known rum runner back during prohibition. He built a very successful roadhouse out in the back woods that straddled the Maine/New Brunswick border. They always kept a spotter outside and when the U.S. officials made a raid, they would shift the booze to the Canadian side. When the Mounties raided they would shift the booze to the US side. Don't know if the two countries ever coordinated their efforts, but I do know for a fact that the family still has a lot of that money made back nearly 100 years ago.

Few years a guy complaining to a friend of mine said... “Goddammit, I just turned 65 and went down to file for my CPP (Canada’s federally run contributory pension plan) and they turned me down!! You rich guys get to collect and us little guys get shafted once again!! Goddammed gommerment!” My friend explained... “Listen, you never paid a single cent into CPP. You spent your whole life taking cash payments under the table. You did everything you could to avoid paying taxes. In fact it was only last week that you were laughing and bragging that you hardly paid any taxes during your whole life. That’s why you can’t collect CPP.” “Yeah, well it still ain’t fair!” And that unfortunately is the way a lot of people think. Another true story... Years ago Revenue Canada was doing an audit of fishermen in a certain part of our Province where it was a well known fact that the fishermen were dividing up payments for their catch and on paper they were spreading the payments among the family members including children to reduce taxes and ensure everyone in the family would all get unemployment payments. So this lady phones into the local talk show complaining about their community being singled out for this and how it badly reflected on people in the area. Said it was disgusting. And finished up the tirade by saying... “We make an honest living up here and I will have you know that, just like everyone else in the community, every single person in our family works their full 14 weeks every single year!” Fourteen being the minimum needed to collect unemployment payments. Meanwhile the rest of us were paying for her family's other 38 weeks.

Or, given the number of shares held by FFH it might not be that easy to sell without driving the price down. Like has been mentioned, it may well be that he is looking for a buyer of all the shares. Then again, it may simply an ego thing.

So that would tend to end any thoughts that Prem was hanging on to BB because he had inside information that something big was upcoming and that was his reason for not selling. I for one, am running our of excuses for him. So why is FFH seemingly making no attempt to sell shares? Isn't this the second sell by BB insiders recently?