cwericb
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Posts posted by cwericb
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"Tracking Prem Watsa's Fairfax Financial Holdings Portfolio - Q4 2020 Update"
Article from Seeking Alpha.
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We can debate the merits of being too cautious or opening up the world to normal business and letting the chips fall where they may. That's easy to say if your health isn't compromised or you're over age 75. We can also compare other parts of the world that simply let the virus spread and create herd immunity early, but you can easily show how isolated regions like New Zealand, the Caribbean, PEI, etc were able minimize infection thanks to their isolated locations. The irony is that those complaining about closed businesses now, weren't complaining about closed borders a year ago...so which is it?
I can comment on PEI. We have had slightly more than 100 cases to date and presently have just five active. There has been no community spread, not a single person has died and no one has even been hospitalized. If you can qualify to come to our province, you MUST be tested and self isolate for 14 days.
We have been very careful and have locked down certain businesses temporarily at times when necessary and then re-opened. Given that our third largest industry is tourism (1.6 million visitors annually in a population of 160,000), we have faced a lot of challenges financially and that industry in particular has suffered greatly..
However being proactive has also had its benefits. Presently life here is relatively normal or at least a new normal. Restaurants, gyms, etc are all open. Our provincial budget actually had a decent surplus in 2020 and most businesses are operating as normal and some are booming. Real estate and construction are setting records, partially due to people seeing the province as a relatively safe place from Covid. However we have been setting sales records for several years.
The fact that we can control who enters the province and having a relatively small population certainly makes it easier. However if we apply the US death rate to our population we should have had thousands hospitalized and hundreds of deaths. Yet we have no dead and no one has yet to be hospitalized.
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Funny how things go though.
BB seems to be holding in the $12 US -$15 CDN range. If someone told us a month ago that BB would double in the next 30 days we would have been quite pleased.
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The Dow is down over 600 points today.
Blackberry is up nearly 40% today.
Blackberry has quadrupled since the first of the month.
Have I lost my mind or is this just a dream?
Will we soon be criticizing Prem if he sold BB a week ago for selling too soon?
Anyone else getting nervous?
Yes! Not sure what I’m nervous of though!
I feel exactly the same way.
Surely to heavens Prem is selling portions daily as this rally goes on.
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The Dow is down over 600 points today.
Blackberry is up nearly 40% today.
Blackberry has quadrupled since the first of the month.
Have I lost my mind or is this just a dream?
Will we soon be criticizing Prem if he sold BB a week ago for selling too soon?
Anyone else getting nervous?
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So the BB convertible debs are now worth $1 billion (55m shares x $18)?
Speechless.
SJ
How quickly things change! That was this morning when we thought BB pricing was nuts. Mid afternoon and BB is up nearly another 30% ($23.00).
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Dumped the rest of Chou Ass. Dumped some in October but hung onto the rest until now and has been up 15-20% since I sold in October
Added to RY (Royal Bank) a few weeks ago.
Added to FFH today.
Started a position in BRK.B.
Also started a small position in WLF.TSXV (Wolfden Resources) just for fun - have been watching this for a couple of years and it seems they could be on to something interesting in Maine, at least Altius (ALS.TO) thinks so.
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Personally, Ive never quite understood how people make and then lose life changing fortunes to a degree that it significantly effects their life. There's few "essential" big ticket items in life. To me, house, car, boat....House you buy once and then need to keep reserves for the repairs/replacement...car figure 10 year life cycle, maybe 15. Boat, we'll leave that one alone. But how folks can make hundreds of thousands, let alone millions, and not check those boxes is astounding to me. How dont you cash out and solidify those? Because once those boxes are checked off, you could probably work at Chipotle and still maintain a pretty decent quality of life. Biggest other expense is probably healthcare, which you can now get even with a part time bs job at Starbucks or Home Depot. You dont need to be a genius to see that "no mortgage/manageable mortgage, no car payment, couple toys"....makes life 100x easier.
Greed.
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There's a large employer in my town that apparently allows employees to invest in individual securities in their 401k accounts. One of my acquaintances who works there put 100% of his 401k in Tesla stock and was gloating about being up $50k or something. I could probably post a different story like this every day about what I'm seeing around me.
Yeah, had a friend tell me not long ago that they had "invested" in TSLA and how well they were doing. They have never invested in the market before and probably shouldn't be. I told them to be very, very careful that at these levels it was a very high risk stock for them to be in. But since then TSLA has been up nearly $200 so what do I know?
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Heather is an oaf. Typical academic liberal elite hack.
Otherwise, good to see we are gettihttps://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/Themes/default/images/upshrink.pngng excuses on day 1.
Shoot the messenger, ignore the message?
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Yeah the $17 was several years ago. But if it is less I'm certainly not complaining. :)
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I may be wrong but my recollection of what Prem said agrees with Xerxes ~ $17.00. However things may have improved somewhat since then.
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I recently sold Chou Associates as it has been a terrible investment over the long term and I will look at deploying the cash during the next sell-off. Here is an update on my portfolio as last time I forgot to include my ETF from my pension. Any feedback?
Atlas: 25.18%
Fairfax: 20.31%
Trisura: 18.32%
CN Rail: 9.72%
Royal Bank: 7.9%
S&P500 ETF: 6.41%
Cash: 4.59%
Blackberry: 3.95%
Wells Fargo: 3.39%
What do you guys think of my portfolio? Any feedback? to give an idea on size of portfolio, it is between $500k - $2m
Atlas - 27.35%
Trisura - 20.10%
Fairfax - 19.71%
CN Rail - 10.22%
Royal Bank - 8.34%
Blackberry - 5.88%
Chou Associates - 4.36%
Wells Fargo - 3.38%
Premier Diversified Holdings - 0.55%
Ditto on Chou Ass, but retained some. We also share FFH & RY
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Just heard a PEI real estate ad on the radio saying that the MAJORITY of their sales last year exceeded the asking price.
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"With a minority government the Liberals will not be taxing capital gains on principal residence sale."
Not only would it be extremely unpopular, it would be very difficult to implement. However, if the Feds have to start giving out more billions they could reduce the capital gains from the 50% level fairly easily to help replenish the coffers and it wouldn't be that unpopular with some segments of the population. Hopefully that will not be necessary.
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if government tax you on cap gain for principal residence... how will that work practically
cuz improvements etc will be tax-deductible... are they going to demand receipts from Rona & home depot going back many years ?????
I would think if they did something like that they would almost have some sort of value placed on every house as of today and then tax future increase from that point.
If I remember correctly in 1994 I believe they did something like that when they dropped the $100,000 deductible on capital gains
Isn't it more likely CRA would simply increase the taxable portion of capital gains from 50% to perhaps 75% or something like that?
Something to think about though as I am sitting here waiting for email confirmation on the sale of two small properties and a change in the capital gains rate is something to be considered.
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For those wondering why housing prices keep rising, consider this:
World population
1900 = 1.6 Billion
1963 = 3.2 Billion - doubled in 63 years and (increased by 1.6 mil in 63 years)
2003 = 6.4 Billion - doubled in 40 years and (increased by 3.2 mil in 40 years)
2020 = 7.8 Billion - increased by 1.4 million in 17 years
People have to live somewhere.
"Billion with a b! Aside from poor covid response, Canada has been desirable to live for sure." Oops, millions corrected to billions.
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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all.
Hopefully by the end of next year Covid 19 will be under control world wide and being vaccinated will ensure long term protection from the disease.
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Trying to figure out if you are an optimist or a pessimist :)
I would guess that it will be late spring (?) perhaps before I qualify (advanced age and all that) but am in no rush. Be interesting to see if there are any unexpected reactions in the meantime. Good luck with the tetanus shot.
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Before long probably, haha & you?
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In our area vaccinations are starting Wednesday morning.
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Perhaps another situation of delayed reaction which often accompanies FFH good results?
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Yup $17 is the number I remember.
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Cwericb, that is about the most delusional post that I have read in a long time.
No one is "immigrating" to Atlantic Canada pushing up prices because no one wants to go there.
Now, getting back to the real cause of price increase it is because people are moving out of condos to suburbs and it makes detached homes to go up in price or a global phenomenon. Then condo prices have not adjusted yet to lower demand reality because of price anchoring.
Cardboard
Good Morning Cadboard
Once again you are embarrassing yourself with your insults and your sadly ill informed opinions. Still hiding in your basement?
Perhaps you know more than the Financial Post, but here is what they say...
"Atlantic Canada’s housing market on fire as buyers from across the country swoop in to snap up homes."
Here are a few other headlines just to help you out...
“How the pandemic 'lit the fire' of a red-hot real estate market inside the Atlantic bubble”
“Atlantic bubble fuelling red hot Maritime real estate market”
“Booming Halifax housing market shows no signs of slowing ...”
Now who is delusional?
By the way, how is the real estate market doing in your area these days?
Cwericb
Ben Graham Centre's 2021 Value Investing Conference
in Fairfax Financial
Posted
You might get more response if you post this topic under the "General Discussion" section.