valuecfa

No worries. Arbitrage will ensure a fairly tight value range with the FFH.TO listed security (adjusted for currency exchange). Liquidity isn't that bad thus far at about 1/4 of the volume of FFH.TO. This slightly lower liquidity and slightly large spread may at times cause a small discount (and at times, perhaps a small premium) from the Toronto listed security, but i would not expect any wide discrepancies. Institutional investors can convert their shares from ordinary to ADR and back in seconds with the click of a button, should one market become more liquid than the other or should one have a very temporary price discrepancy. The cost to convert ADRs to ordinary shares is down to about 1 or 2 cents a share through systems like ADR Navigator or ADR Max.

Cardboard, This may be helpful too: http://www.m-x.ca/f_publications_en/currency_options.pdf

Its an interesting company. It has only recently been making a big push for the retail investor through big advertising dollars on CNBC and the like, which i think is likely to pay off over the near term. I think they may get a pretty nice return on their advertising since it is probably the perfect time to advertise their product as more and more investors are looking for local access to foreign stock exchanges from a single account, with low margin rates, cheapest commissions, great execution, etc. They kind of have that image (and are marketing it) like-- you too can can trade every product on every foreign exchange with the best execution that has been only available to hedge fund managers, but we are now opening up our services to retail. Their profit margins are relatively really good. They only have 131,800 customer accounts so their is plenty of room for growth, which grew 20% last month YOY. Another amazing stat is their 619 annualized average cleared DARTs per customer account. I haven't checked their number of customer accounts relative to the competition recently, but I read a 2008 report that stated: Both E*Trade and TD Ameritrade have larger client bases, each with more than 35 times the amount of trading accounts. Where Interactive has an advantage is with the 700 trades each account engages in each year, compared to TD Ameritrade’s 10 trades per account.

Looks like even if you have access to foreign trading u still get FRFHF.PK, at least i did. Nice liquidity/spreads. I wonder if my broker can do a reorg into the Toronto listed security without enacting a sale.

I would hardly call him rolling over. Byrne has put up a very admirable fight, upon receiving harsh criticism the entire time. The easy thing for him to do all along was give up. Yet he chose to fight back. He is definitely on my most admirable top 10 list.

Correct me if i'm wrong but i think thinkorwim allows foreign exchange (currency) trading, yet does not allow trading of foreign company shares trading on foreign exchanges, like Interactive Brokers does. As for Wells Fargo, I don't want to pay for a financial advisor (like 1% of assets under mgmt) which keeps me out of the major prime brokers (though i wouldn't mind some of their research privileges), and i do want international trading privileges, a good fixed income privelages, as well as forex, futures, derivatives.

I spoke with OCC's operations area earlier today regarding FFH. They have been in contact with the NYSE with regards to the delisting. When further information is available, it will be posted here. http://www.optionsclearing.com/market-data/infomemos/infomemos1.jsp

Wow. They have some culture there. I wonder what you would have to do if you want to ask your boss for a raise.

I've been thinking of switching to IB for a few months now. Maybe this deserves its own thread, but I'm just trying to get a quick idea...What do you guys think about the service, pros/cons. I've played around with their Trader Workstation Demo and it is a little bit cumbersome (like in the way that a Bloomberg Terminal is cumbersome). It kind of reminds me of an excel format actually, and is not so user-friendly. I'm sure you go used to the functions/layout after playing around with it for a while. So how do you guys think it compares? While it is a cheap monthly fee, it is kind of weird to pay for the Rueters News wire and exchange market quotes, and other data.

The only fair/good value i see is in high quality names. Most all of the junk and cyclical companies have already priced in a rosy scenario that may or may not occur. I can not find any terrific bargains at the moment. Similar to Fairfax, I have hedged 25% of my equity portfolio with an S&P short position.

Love the deep dish. I have been to a few places in Chicago for the stuff but not yet Giordanos. It is kind of a tradition for me and the family whenever in Chicago to hit up some deep dish and catch a Second City show, and the occasional Billy Goat Tavern snack. I would love to move to Chicago over any other city in the U.S., but once again the weather is too brutal in the winter for my enjoyment. I was there for one Thanksgiving and it was miserably cold and windy, but i agree that the views of downtown are incredible. I like my summers to be above 80 F. I love the winter but only for a few months out of the year. I would hate to live in a place where i would have to wear a heavy jacket more than 6 months out of the year. I figure Toronto might fit that bill similar to Chicago. Both beautiful cities, but cold most of the year.

What!?#*! You have got to be kidding me. I think it is time for the administrator to close this thread. Oh, wait...

Smazz, I would have done it years ago if it wasn't freeze your nuts off cold up there.

No. There will be a reorganization to another security, not FFH.TO (since your broker doesn't offer canadian holdings directly). This will be a nontaxable reorganization of your shares.

You know that those funds are not managed by Marty. They are managed by a different manager within his mutual fund advisory co. I'm sure the whole team of managers at the different funds there discuss and share some ideas, but Whitman doesn't have the final say in what that fund buys and sells.

Btw, the system is not exactly free. A typical family of 4 pays about $1300 a yr in premium to the govt. in BC and many costs -some drugs, physiotherapy, routine check-ups, etc - are not covered by the system. Many people, if they are not covered by their employers, pay several thousand $ more to have supplemental insurance cover. Wow, $1300 would be awesome! My mother is 59 years, on no medication, healthy as a 30 year old and has individual coverage from Blue Cross for about $9,000 per year.

What say ye Canadians about your health care system? Personally, I am pro public option (robust) in the U.S. I wonder if we will ever see the day when politicians can vote with their own minds instead of the special interest groups or party majority votes, and these politicians quit acting like 3rd graders. It would be nice to have respectable debates/rebuttals on the issue, but the media and the politicians always seem to throw in illogical and incredible ideals with little respectable discussion. As an aside, I found a reference to this company on CNN the other day, that is quite an interesting and convenient idea: http://www.planethospital.com It makes sense that medical tourisim becomes a much larger part of health care in the future, especially for high cost providers like the U.S.

This is the way to go. As you say, fire people for writing less business and the remaining staff will be certain to not repeat their mistake. This is an investment holding company with cheap leverage, as far as I'm concerned. No underwriting profit? Boo hoo. Leucadia doesn't have underwriting profit... shit, as long as you make a lot of money investing that's what counts most. Leucadia used to have a sidecar in Olympus Insurance and they bailed when it blew up on them with poor underwriting. That cheap underwriting can turn expensive real quick. (As you know)

I suppose this is sometimes what happens when you purchase some insurance companies for well under book value. You get the immediate undervalued assets, yet you have many years of mediocre underwriting. So long as investment returns are at above satisfactory levels then i sure don't mind breaking even on underwriting into the foreseeable future. However, if this company could keep there CR into the low to mid 90s as an average, then it would make this investment a much larger and rewarding holding in my portfolio.

Great stuff! Interesting side note" During the third quarter, in response to the significant appreciation in equity market valuations during 2009, the company hedged approximately one-quarter of its equity investment exposure by entering into S&P 500 index-referenced total return swap contracts ($1.5 billion notional amount at approximately the 1,062 level of the S&P 500 index).

At June 30, 2009 there were 17,443,784 shares effectively outstanding. An additional 2,881,844 subordinate voting shares were issued in the previously announced offering, totalling 20,325,628 shares (assuming no equity grants/options exercised/share repurchases since June 30.) At $345/share the market capitalization would be US $7,012,341,660. Yahoo Finance quite frequently has misleading figures.

The market cap is $7 Billion, not $6 Billion.

My first week as a research assistant for a buy side firm (many years ago) my boss asked me to get a feel for a company that was in the electric motor business, way before "green" had anything to do with the environment. He said after researching the company to call the CEO and ask him any questions I might have, and then present my case to him. It was a great first week to learn that as a kid I could call the CEO of a decent size company and chat with him for 20 minutes about anything I wanted. So, my recommendation is just to pick up the phone and give the CEO or CFO, or corporate finance dept, or whomever, a call and voice your concerns. I think you would be surprised at some of the frank responses you will get. One other tip I learned when i got my next job at an associate at a smaller less reputable buy side firm, was that you could be anybody on the phone. To get a good bit of a CEO's time at a larger company, you can be anybody on the other line, if you think it will help to get him to call you back, which can be annoying. While this may be frowned upon, it is done quite frequently by the smaller shops looking to get information from larger companies, where the phone calls only tend to be returned from the CEO if he "has the time". I've even had a colleague pretend he worked for the WSJ just to get a phone call returned from Bob Nardelli, back when he was at the Depot.

I'd rather purchase $2100 in call options in...anything. Unless that amount of money is somewhat immaterial, or you want to go for potential contacts, then I think it would be better invested or spent on something you will enjoy more. Besides, the companies that are referenced at the gathering by the more well known investors always turn up on the Internet and other media. Personally, i think a more entertaining and informative conference might be the Berkshire annual meeting. I've always wanted to go but never have for some reason or another.

Somewhat along the same line of thought, I am recently a new investor in both JNJ and Kraft. The weak dollar will help earnings, especially on a YOY basis in the coming quarters. Both are always on investors' top 10 list of the most stable, respectable, and steady companies. The dividend yields on both are great. And as investors begin to ponder the sustainability in the massive run up in the more risky names, they may decide to move to quality names such as the two mentioned. The fed is begging investors to purchase equities by flooding the system with liquidity, which will eventually scare fixed income investors out of those lower yielding treasury markets (in real terms once inflation presents itself). Eventually investors will be forced to invest in appreciable assets in an inflationary environment, and be forced to move along the risk curve away from bonds. Yet those bond investors will want the steady income of an equity-like bond in a quality name like JNJ, especially given the recent large moves of higher risk equities, which may be overvalued. Quality is on sale in a big way right now. JNJ, KFT, PG are all quality names with nice yields trading at large discounts to the S&P, although historically they have traded at a premium to the S&P. Long JNJ equity, and 2011 & 2012 JNJ LEAPS $60 strike Long KFT equity Long PG