SharperDingaan

I found that eating less, and a spread of different tasks, worked best for me. Calculate your BMI, then look up the BMI threshold that is considered 'healthy' - it'll shock you. Eat 500 cals/day less, and you'll both take off 1 lb (3500 cals)/week and keep it off - it's essentially the eat 80% of your plate thing, expressed in numbers. You'll also become a lot more conscious of how many calories are in some foods, and how little you should eat of them. To lose 1 lb/week via exercise alone, is a lot of work - about 55 miles/week of mountain biking @ 65 cals/mile, or 35 miles/week of hiking @ 100 cals/mile. Less weight, and you'll automatically have more energy and greater sharpness. Doing different tasks, reduces the dulling from repetition. Applying a little mental discipline will take you some way as well. SD

Hate to say it, but if you can't trust your own family - you have far bigger issues than digital nomadism! Have to assume that you can't trust your current/future spouse either? SD

You have at least 4 decisions here - all overlapping. Digital nomadism may be great, but are you required to be in the same time zone? (Seattle, PST). The US states that follow PST and PDT are California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. Canadian provinces where PDT is used during summers and PST the rest of the time are British Columbia and Yukon. Time limited engagement? You may be OK with this, but if there are to be kids or you would like to have a significant other - you need to stay in one place. How many years can you do this, or is it just months. Minimum holding period? Commission/closing paid on entry/exit, divided by average NET annual cash flow. For most opportunities this is going to be 5-7 years, or longer if you're paying someone to manage the property & get the bookings. What is the purpose? Buying a place ties you to one location - and is anti digital nomadism (freedom). Doing it because you can? - renting is a lot more in sync with the whole concept of digital nomadism. If you just want to buy a property, invest your money with siblings &/or parents. Low risk, trusted partners, you're still on the property ladder, and still free to do the nomadism thing. When you need the money back to buy your own house - they just take out a new mortgage equal to the market value of your % ownership of the property. In the meantime, just rent wherever you happen to be, and for as long as it continues to make sense. SD

More educated? I seriously doubt that. You have to be a baby boomer to have experienced inflation and we all know that baby boomers suck. Reading a textbook doesn’t really give you the same experience, that’s for sure. My grandparents were small kids during the Weimar inflation in 1922 and told me stories about people rushing to the stores to buy what they can immediately on payday because next morning, things were way more expensive. They were playing with small money notes that were several orders or magnitude devalued (a couple of weeks old at the peak) and people were moving money in wheelbarrows. I remember the 70’s and hard assets and gold later were all the rage. There was the 1979 Hunt brothers silver boom and bust. Easy money leads to a lot of misallocation of Capital but inflation does so as well. Hagstroms book “Warren Buffet way” discusses how WEB was investing in inflationary setting (buy business with pricing power and low reinvestment needs) and may be worth a re-read. Keep in mind that for an 'experience' to remain in the public domain, it has to be traumatic, current (within a decade), and experienced simultaneously by multiple generations. As the eldest generation dies off, everyone moves up a generation, and 'experience' rapidly fades. It also warps, as you recall what inflation was like for a male/female, at an earlier life stage - NOT today's stage of life. A very large portion of the NA population has little/no inflation experience, and much of the recall is severely warped. Contrast that to SA, Africa, and parts of Eastern Europe. Grandmothers investing their life savings in canned goods, for resale on the street at the days price level, a COMMON sight. And not 'back then' - every 10-20 years or so. Want to know about inflation? Talk to immigrants from those places. It is pretty hard to get inflation in a global great recession/depression - but guaranteed if the monetary authority has no choice but to print more bills: inflation remains, and the economy switches to alternative currencies. Hence, we see everything possible being done to push monetary policy to the limits (and beyond), to minimize the use of fiscal policy. There is a reason why we tolerate the absurdity of negative interest rates. Bankers willingly paying you to borrow large amounts of money from them - is rational? Really? SD

This is really about your investment 'process’. If you learnt by making every mistake known to man, and surviving them (boiler maker) – risk management, and rapid ‘fixing’ of mistakes is as natural as breathing. You are anti-fragile, and arguably, the more organic/murkier the process the better - as the ‘shit and I’ is old mates! Investing is fun. If you learnt by very technical thesis application (diva), you had a much easier ride – but when things go wrong, you either blow up or have a breakdown. You are more-fragile than you think, prone to thesis denial/tantrum, and cannot handle failure. Investing is fun – but only if it goes your way. Process is one thing, application another. If ‘boiler maker’ is your thing, you run businesses – not invest in them. ‘Investment’ is merely good cheque-book management, your focus is profit maximization – and value is just a derivative of that. If ‘diva’ is your thing, you invest in the shares of businesses - you don’t attempt to run them. Know your place. Obviously, the approaches are not mutually exclusive, and there is a wide spectrum within each approach. As in a Venn diagram, the number of people who can successfully overlap both worlds are very small. Hence entrepreneurs selling their business - typically becoming very conservative, post sale. SD

That depends on how long you live in the vacation property right? I could spend 4 months a year there now that my company allows permanently work from home Not owning the vacation property gives you flexibility to go anywhere, anytime, for any length of time - you are not stuck with the same place. Today you rent a place in Greece for a month, been there, done that. Tomorrow you rent a place in the US desert. There will also be tax considerations. Usually favouring 'home', over 'vacation property', status. SD

Buy the home/condo to live in - and rent the vacation property as/when you need it. SD

Good catch. SD

Seeing (and acting on) what is really there, versus what you want to see - is a double-edged sword. We are on the edge of another global great depression - if too many people wake up to it at once, it will become reality. Most textbooks hint at what to do. Do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, and pick up the pieces later - wartime level (or higher), monetary and fiscal spend for years. They are just a little lacking on the mechanics at the extremes, and practice over theory. Now, look around you ..... SD

The political hope is that the Dow either continues rising through November, or at least doesn't fall too much. Enron demonstrated that even if you didn't believe, the smart thing was to keep buying and pushing the price higher - while also taking $ off the table, and covering a portion of the rest with puts. The run-up to the 1929 crash similarly demonstrated that the smart thing was to sell the broader index, take $ off the table, and pile into the nifty-fifty. Margin where you could, and take the $ out - in expectation of wide-spread brokerage and bank failures, ultimately removing your debt. Smart. The Robin Hood phenomena largely mirrors the margin lending of 1929, everybody in the market, and talking up the crowd for fame and glory. Back then it was being the swell at a better speakeasy, today it is posting for likes on social media. Same overall effect, different mechanics. Can't take $ of the table, unless there's a patsy to sell to. Every ponzi scheme eventually collapses under its own weight. The market drops, the patsies can't meet their margin calls, and history repeats. Only this time the rich get richer, 'cause put options are a lot more efficient and effective than shorting. Once the run starts, it doesn't suddenly stop .... it keeps going. When it happens, people need someone to hate - before they can move on. The upcoming election result is a natural break. SD

Just to throw some numbers in, that highlight the severity, This took roughly just one month from the time it became 'public' until the time the funding was announced - Ontario has roughly 38% of Canada's population. Converting to US equivalency, this is roughly CAD 10.5B (4/.38), or USD 8.0B. It is not just size, it is speed as well. " Hard-hit Ontario municipalities will receive nearly $4 billion in funding from the federal and provincial governments to help shore up their finances in the wake of the pandemic-related shutdown. Premier Doug Ford said the funding—$2.2 billion from Ontario and $1.7 billion from the federal government—will help support "homeless shelters, women's shelters, food banks, public health and transit." https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-municipalities-to-get-4b-in-covid-19-bail-out-1.5040183 Canada's equivalent to this unemployment benefit is the CERB. It has already been extended once to Aug-31, following which most expect it to be rolled into the existing unemployment program. Expect about the same amount, and ability to earn more than currently the case - while also receiving the benefit. A 5% decline in the Dow is conservative. SD

The market is also NOT pricing in this. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/27/politics/stimulus-negotiations-republican-plan/index.html 'For most recipients of the $600 federal unemployment benefit enhancement, the final checks went out a few days ago. The official deadline is July 31. The federal eviction moratorium expired last week'. Negotiations are not going well, and starting today - the money tap turned off. What do you think happens when millions of people no longer have a cash flow, and there are not enough jobs for them, because there is not enough spending? Do you really think that the Dow stays at 26,500 - or is it much more likely that it falls, and hard? Just a 5% drop is 1,325 points. SD

The market is also NOT pricing in how the municipalities and states are going to finance their Covid-19 related spend. To mitigate material property tax and state income tax hikes, EVERY muni/state in the nation will have to come to market by Mar-31 (year-end). There is no way that the sheer size of the aggregate borrow doesn't disrupt the hell out of the market, and no way that it can be achieved without severe political polarization adding further uncertainty. SD

This will help keep the price down. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-ontario-court-delays-torstar-takeover-after-rival-bidder-raises/ "Torstar lawyer Ryan Morris cast the two objecting parties as “a bitter, failed bidder and a disgruntled former employee who should not be permitted to disrupt a robust process.” He said NordStar increased its offer for Torstar – publisher of the Toronto Star newspaper – twice as the auction played out, securing the support of the five families who control Torstar’s voting stock and of major shareholder Fairfax Financial Holdings Inc." Most would expect that the FFH presence, and prior history with this kind of thing, was a factor in the court decision. The obvious resolution is another round of bidding, and sale to the highest bidder - if the existing winner is to remain, they pay up for it. Put up the winning bid, and put the peeving lawyer away. There is nothing wrong with fair bidding for an asset. However, it is theft if the selling company doesn't accept the highest bid. Like it or not, all the sellers common shareholders own the company equally. SD

No dog in this, but it's not a bad deal for the work-out. Very telling that the principal o/s is being reduced by 80 M - depending on how one calculates. Risk management. Ultimately, the business expectation is that BB is eventually merged into someone bigger, for a smaller slice of a bigger/better pie. But were they not already trapped in BB, there are other/better IT investments. The ongoing opportunity cost is the premium on the call option, at the current yield curve - pretty cheap. Can't really fault the business decision. SD

Keeps circling back to the trust, vision, and reporting thing. Everyone makes mistakes ... but when they keep coming up, and more frequently, it's a pattern. Fair and Friendly might have been the original vision, but it has devolved quite a bit since then. Make your own assessments, but there are plenty of other fish. SD

"Not sure how that is teachable" Friends in low places advise that it's very simple - in their world; the first one or two to forget sleep with the fishes, following which everyone remembers. In our world, it's the metaphorical heads on sticks - same message, but less clean up, and no flies to deal with. African thing ;) SD

Sadly - good leadership, and a good investment, don't have a high degree of correlation. Mostly because leadership is long-term orientated whereas investment is short term orientated. A great business requires reputation, growth & predictability, whereas a great investment - just requires volatility. An Enron a Worldcom, a Nortel were all great investments; both on the way up (long), and on the way down (short). Had you 'invested' wisely, you would have made stupid amounts of money. The leadership in those companies? not so hot. There are all kinds of other examples - and we see them every day. Might not be most peoples preference, but it is just another way of turning a profit. The equation changes when you have partners. Shareholders are NOT partners. no matter how much they might think they are. Partners have unlimited liability exposure to each other, shareholders don't. Different dynamics. SD

Like it or not, FFH is a family business transitioning succession. An inherently higher risk activity. Mistakes are inevitable. There is a reason why merit is a criteria, and not nepotism - and the higher the appointment, the more critical that separation is. It is preferable that the screw-ups happen in a row-boat, not the ship carrying the row-boats; there are lots of potential solutions, but it will be a family decision, not the shareholders. Higher risk, gets settled via a higher price discount. Lower multiples, haircuts for opportunity loss, waning 'popularity', etc. There are plenty of fish in the sea. An investor can toss back an ugly one, and get a replacement, at any time. We wish them luck, but most investors would be better off elsewhere. SD

The purpose of the Covid spend is to get the economy back on its feet. Most people cannot continue to live where they are if their property taxes go up 50% in one year, and more the year after. They have to move - and their forced mass selling into into a buyers market, will drops MV's, which will drop LOC maximums, contracting credit and strangling recovery. Recovery isn't going to happen, if the municipalities or states are bankrupt. Ultimately - the issue is the size of the cumulative debt (muni, state, fed) across all 52 states, and how it gets serviced. If the economic pie is shrinking (or no longer growing), there are hard choices. SD

Covid-19 has been with us for a while now, and we have a better picture of the spend to date on the various stimulus programs. As well as a murky insight into a number of grey elephants that hadn't initially been considered. The economic 'story' is "Yes, it is serious - but it is a temporary blip; that we will recover from once the economy is back up". All canadian municipalities are required to balance their budget every year, with any shortfall charged to the taxbase the following year. Toronto, recently forecast a current year Covid-19 related shortfall of 1.65B, and a property tax-hike of 35% if it weren't addressed - late last week, the Federal Government agreed to fund part of it. Every single municipality in Canada has the same issue, and will seek similar relief. The same Grey Rhino is present in the US. Most project annual Covid-19 spend to exceed the annual spend levels of WWII. During WWII, both the Allies/Axis financed their war efforts via patriotic domestic war-bonds - long/no maturities, and very low rates. The US financed Vietnam by removal of gold backed notes, and the USD as the worlds reserve currency. For a Canada, it is hard to imagine an eventual total Covid-19 recovery bill, of much under 2-3T - net of multiple years of wage subsidies, industry bailouts, mega-project stimulus, and social spend on skills retooling. Canada will come out modernized, and a lot stronger for it - but it's a nation building multi-year project - NOT a 1-2 year project. At 10x Canada's size - the total US bill is roughly 20-30T+. The EU will have something similar. I would like to hear how US based COBF members, would expect a financing of this size to play out - as it has never been done before. My own view is that ultimately, this it is going to require new arrangements, similar to what occurred in the years immediately following the end of WWII. And NONE OF THIS is priced into the market yet. SD

Think of your career. For most people - the industry you work in - is the industry in which you got your first full-time job. For the CPA, CFA, lawyer, etc. - it is the industry you went to as soon as you got your designation. Anytime you change jobs, that will be the industry where you are the 'best fit', and where you will get paid most. PROCESS keeps you in the industry swim-lane, and luck chose the industry - it was just where the jobs were at the time. It is the same in investing. To change careers requires ongoing flexibility, significant effort, and ability to absorb loss for an extended period (ask anyone in o/g). An individual might use a MBA/PhD as the change vehicle, an IT manager might use Agile Project Management. A PM has to rely on how often the 'phone rings - today's star value investor being tomorrow's bum. Successful investing requires ongoing mental flexibility, and continuous expansion of circle of competence. A great antidote is to learn how to simultaneously play chess against 4-5 other players, under distraction. It forces one to filter, think flexibly and at speed, in terms of flow versus static positions, and always outside the box (as everyone knows the standard thrusts/parries). Sadly, the former east block players that I used to play with have all passed on now, and their games were always an 'event' - 18 minutes, to win 2 or more games, to the music of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture ;D The 'master's' at this used to insist on fireworks for the cannon, played pissed out of their skulls, and were the most cunning evil bastards you'd ever want to play. SD

It will be a year-end 'discussion' item with their auditor. One side will argue that it was isolated, and correctly accounted for via the loss recorded on date on sale. As a result of the sale, the valuation premise of the remaining stake was further strengthened - hence an impairment write-down is not required (opinion). The other side will most likely concur - subject to a disclosure note that outlines the material facts of the transaction. Reader makes his/her own decision. Comes back to the trust, vision, and informational reporting thing. One is either OK with this kind of thing, or not. SD

Assume FFH does NOT record the impairment - subject to an annual future MM impairment charge. It is not unusual for different owners of the Toronto DT towers to have different valuations on their ownership portions of the same tower (precedent)- and just reflects their differing future opinions. IFRS accounting is accepting as long as the opinion and valuation is documented - and there is annual impairment testing (valuation model re-run with current data), if the opinion difference is material. SD

Treat it as a learning experience in investment strategy. Master it, if you intend to invest in the 2nd/3rd world. Three main takeaways. 1. A minority shareholder has no place investing in a FAH. He/she has to trust the majority shareholder, believe in their 'vision', and accept that the entire information structure of the new arrangement - puts them at a severe disadvantage. Lot more 'real' to just write a cheque to Oxfam, or invest in an african gold/platinum miner. 2. FFH sucks at this. Sure, they should do better under the new management going forward - but they are still neophytes. Given how hard it is to outrun devaluation/corruption, and how easy it is to screw up; most would expect more fails than successes. Implies that FAH is worth more as a short, and that there is a bias towards taking the minority out altogether - at a discount. 3. If you want to invest in Africa, use an index fund - & bet against the MCSI Index. Diversifies the risk, buy at a deep liquidity discount when there is a rush for the exits (today), sell at inflated prices when there is a rush back in .... Helios reporting outsized profits, triggering a gold rush ;) We live in interesting times. SD