ERICOPOLY

New positions in CLPR and PLBY. Go together sorta. added to ATCO

"This would be above 2018's peak $800 billion levels and nearly double 2020's depressed $500 billion levels, suggesting upside risk to our forecast for no net EPS impact from buybacks to the S&P," BofA said.

Corporate share buybacks are at a record high Wall Street may be on track for $900 billion of gross S&P 500 buybacks in 2021. https://www.businessinsider.com/stock-buybacks-record-2-billion-tech-bank-of-america-march-2021-3

"That's why the July data is very unusual, because the market is essentially sitting at an all-time high and we had a pretty sizable downtick in margin debt. That's really weird." https://fortune.com/2021/08/24/stocks-margin-debt-decline-bear-market-indicator/

How does the Blackberry investment (and others) occur when they've already stated that they've finally learned that it's better to hold investments in high quality companies like WFC, KFT, JNJ, USB for the long term. Those "high quality" companies are the ones they bought to show us that they've learned. Oh, wait, where are those companies in the portfolio now? What the heck happened to them? Did they ever state that they've tossed that strategy out the window?

"After much thought and discussion, it became clear to me that shorting is dangerous, very short term in nature and anathema to long term value investing. " He's been investing professionally since the 1970s.

It should have nothing to hold it back now with the September booster shots for everyone. The Israeli data on the effectiveness of a 3rd booster shot against Delta shows this to be so.

Some numbers on what a 3rd Pfizer shot does in Israel: Israeli national HMO Maccabi Healthcare Services, which conducted the preliminary study of 149,144 Israelis who received three Pfizer shots, said for Israelis above age 60, a Pfizer booster shot reduced the chances of infection by 86% and reduced the chances of severe infection by 92%. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029628471/highly-vaccinated-israel-is-seeing-a-dramatic-surge-in-new-covid-cases-heres-why

So the claim is that the vaccine makes the virus "more effectively infect the human body". Yet the dead people are the unvaccinated ones. I smell bs.

The point of my stirring the pot with the Buffett citation is that nobody knows whether or not the market is expensive. So just admit that you don't know what you don't know, and don't let yourself get caught pounding the table that it is a bubble or something. It's only a display of arrogance to do so.

Look at Japan's debt. Look at interest rates over the past 25 years in Japan.

Warren Buffett says stocks are ‘ridiculously cheap’ if interest rates stay at these levels https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/06/warren-buffett-says-stocks-are-ridiculously-cheap-if-interest-rates-stay-at-these-levels.html

"One time" cat losses will always be a part of insurance... But given that they are messaging that they are never going to short anything again whatsoever, how were the results over the past ten years excluding the losses from shorting? Has anyone already figured out roughly what the annual rate of growing book value would have been?

I passed a comment like that to our teenagers (4 of them) and they staunchly defended MCD. I was dumbfounded.

It's pretty dumb for the market to respond to upgrades from analysts whom the market was already ignoring in the first place.

Not for no reason at all. It was the short selling ban on the Friday preceeding the pre-market Monday morning announcement of the $400m gain on closing out the AIG CDS.. The CDS portfolio had been exploding and for the same reason Fairfax was dropping like all of the financials were. And there was also hurricane Ike as I recall to add more confusion.

Not the case, rather than complaining about the acquisition, I was entirely not thinking about the acquisition. It's still 5 million shares given out to employees. One can get excited about buybacks, but that's just treading water or rather sinking less slowly. How about pay employees? Out of, you know, earnings?

Another lesson learned from going to see Warren and Charlie for 40 years?

They have about 8% of shares outstanding worth of TRS. So I think if you multiply $54 by 1.08 you arrive at about $58.32, assuming the shares appreciate at precisely the rate of EPS increases. It's a bit confusing to arrive at an estimate for earnings when share increases feed back into earnings and earnings drive share increases.

What do you do with a TRS after you've got one? If it turns out to be a grower and not just a shower, can you 'exercise' it and take delivery of the underlying? What fees are involved in staying in the contract indefinitely? Monthly fees and how much?

Put the stock back on the NYSE where it is sure to never trade permanently at a discount to BV because the hedge funds will pump it up to a premium and book their gains, then put out bad news and short it, and then pump it up and book their gains... And we could lever these cycles with LEAPS again and make money a whole lot faster and Prem can play this game too with the TRS and increase BV growth rate.

Lest we forget, the stock dropped from $100 to $90 at the open when he was running away from Canada with a suitcase full of shareholders money! I mean, we have long memories. We're not going to let him get away with that twice!

So based on Viking and Sanjeev's responses, I take this from it: 1. The industry compensates for low interest rates by holding the line on pricing. Therefore expect this to last until interest rates rise again. 2. If interest rates rise we get the benefit of long tail insurance written when pricing was strong and the short duration bond portfolio gets rolled into higher interest rates. That would be the best of both worlds. And 420 takes the stress away from buying.

With interest rates this terrible, what would be the point of underwriting other than for a solid underwriting profit?

Doubled my FFH. @ it’s at 420 USD of all prices. This is a sign. Cut back WFC