TorontoRaptorsFan

I'm at 25% Big gainers for me were: Nike, Starbucks, Solarcity (loaded up when Chanos was shorting the stock - nice year end recovery with legislation) and 2 short term earnings trades on Amazon 5% gains on Brookfield Asset Management & Disney Only losing positions were Chipotle & Bank of America. Currently buying Chipotle. My thesis: Excellent management, short term e coli crisis has allowed them to greatly improve food standards (probably now best in the food business), share buybacks, and continued expansion of Chipotle, Shophouse (recently added Chicago locations to their existing locations in Washington D.C, Maryland, and California) and Pizzeria Locale (looks like expansion is first taking place in the U.S. Midwest).

Chipotle is a great buy-in at their current price.

Sanjeev, The quality of food since Fairfax has invested in Cara has gone down the drain. Just ate at Bier Market near Sherway a few weeks ago for the first time. The burger was bland, the fries had no crispiness to them. The crepe dessert was uninspiring. I find Swiss Chalet is hit or miss. 90% of the time the chicken is dry. You literally need to order more Chalet sauce to drown the chicken so it's palatable. Harveys can't come close to the burgers made by Five Guys, Shake Shack, or In-N-Out. I stopped going to The Keg since La Castille (Mississauga) has a better tasting steak, gives you a salad with side and is roughly the same price. I ate at Finn McCool's twice and it will never go back. Montana's ribs are terrible. They'll never win any BBQ awards. But yet they promote them as the greatest thing since sliced bread. I was at East Side Mario's the other day. Had the bucatini amatriciana and I used my water glass to drain the liquid that my pasta was sitting in. Maybe they need McEwan to make some food consultations to these restaurants because the current formula doesn't work and will only get worse once the American chains start to muscle in and start eating up market share...

This is the time to back the truck up and load up on more shares of Chipotle. This is a great company that is no longer a one trick pony. They're also growing with more ShopHouses and Pizzeria Locale locations. Management recently did a $300 million share buyback because of the E Coli issue.

Conservative Liberal party here in Ontario has been a trainwreck. Don't want to see it repeated federally.

What puzzles me is that no one goes out of their way to eat at a McEwan establishment. Bymark, North 44, etc is no French Laundry, Alinea, or The Fat Duck. To really scale up chefs are going after the fast casual market ie- Shake Shack, bobby's Burger Palace, I too am worried about Fairfax's emphasis in analyzing and investing in these minuscule businesses when they have bigger fish to fry. I see a lot more of the West Coast restaurant chains( Cactus Cafe, Joey's, Earl's, Brown's Social House) muscling in on the Ontario market because they see how awful the food scene is here

I'm not impressed at all. The food scene here is terrible. No one is raving about the food they'll eat at Harvey's, Swiss Chalet, Finn McCool's etc. Being satisfied with the choices we have is a testament to how apathetic we are as Canadians. I just wish more of the U.S. chains either opened here (ie-Shake Shake, Shophouse, Punch Pizza) or opened more locations at a faster pace (Chipotle). If Fairfax was investing in Thomas Keller I would be applauding this deal. Instead they're investing in a non-Michelin star chef with some average restaurants. Mark McEwan is no Danny Meyer or Thomas Keller.

Disney & Solar City

Disney has started the TV hype for Star Wars in South Korea. This is a new trailer. Many of the scenes you have already seen in the two previous trailers but the opening 10 seconds shows an awesome scene of a mass gathering of stormtroopers and officers attending a rally. I'm a big fan of Disney. I still see a HUGE upside for them.

What would you suggest? Voting? Yeah, hundreds of millions of people already do that every four years and this is the outcome. Run for president myself? Sorry, but I don't have the time or money to attempt such a thing. And besides I'm not a megalomaniac sociopath that wants power and control over how a few hundred million people run their lives. You can manage your own life, just leave me alone. Do you think Abraham Lincoln is a megalomaniac sociopath? No one is asking you to run for President. You can start at mayor...then work your way up the ladder ;)

Imagine a Republican ticket of Rubio-Fiorina. That could easily topple Hilary Clinton's run at President.

I'm a big fan of Disney. I bought more shares when it dropped this week. They have multiple platforms to spread the Disney Gospel. Using ESPN & ABC they can use it to promote movies, television shows, theme parks. ESPN is leveraged in multiple ways to generate revenue aside from advertising from their magazine, and ESPN Insider subscriptions. You'll find more sports analysis of a huge variety of sports under one roof. ESPN is becoming a global name since they now have channels all over the world. I think executives there are now marshaling more resources into sports in the U.S. which has a steadily growing global viewer base such as basketball, football, and soccer. I really think their movie franchises are solid and think of the numerous spinoffs they can generate. They own Marvel, Lucasfilm, Pixar, and the Muppets. The major movies expected next year from them are Captain America 3: Civil War, Zootopia, Finding Dory (sequel to Finding Nemo), Alice in Wonderland, The BFG - Big Friendly Giant (directed by Spielberg), remake of Pete's Dragon, Marvel's Dr. Strange starring Benedict Cumberbatch, and Star Wars: Rogue One. These are movies which will generate even more characters for toy sales, theme parks, tv shows, merchandise, etc. Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be THE BIGGEST film coming out. I can see revenues for that movie easily exceeding $1.5 billion worldwide. There's more and more Star Wars movies on the way. And for anyone who cares about dividend payments they're paying them out now twice a year from once a year. Decent board of directors which includes Bob Iger, John Chen, Jack Dorsey, and Sheryl Sandberg (the latter three on board to help with expanding their digital presence).

Lots of armchair quarterbacking in this thread. If you don't like the system get involved and change it for the positive.

Thank you Scott for your feedback on Facebook. I did some research myself and there is a lot to like about the company - well managed, young executives you can invest in for the long term, willing to make investments in emerging technologies, expanding their platform offerings. I really think Rift Oculus was a very wise investment. The only investment I see which was a massive overpayment was Whatsapp. What are your general thoughts regarding Google and Facebook's heavy R&D on Artificial Intelligence. Do you think either company will succeed in the short term or do you think we're still decades away?

Good luck! I've been looking at DIS all morning (and it's been on a small watchlist prior to this morning). I also barely passed on INT at $36 the other day. There's definitely some interesting stocks getting close to attractive levels. I bought more DIS today. This is a no-brainer investment. Powerful movie franchises, a moat on theme parks, ABC, ESPN, etc.

Disney - DIS Star Wars is coming!

3G, Apple, and Brookfield Asset Management

Hi Scott, Can you share some of your ideas re: Facebook with us. I noticed it as one of your core holdings in your portfolio. Thank you, TRF

What I find most fascinating about all of this is what if we do see signs of intelligent life. Now what? Do governments now shift significant resources to putting more telescopes into space? I'm sure there would be lots of debates questioning the merits of communicating with them. If there's one how many more civilizations are out there? Or are we only seeing one because they're the Super Predator or exceeded all odds and have managed like us to still survive... My guess would be a massive collaboration amongst major nations in teaming up to pool resources together to monitor the situation. And science initiatives redirected towards more space based R&D.

I think more than likely if we encounter any form of intelligent life it will likely be robotic. It's unfortunate more money wasn't pumped into NASA because getting telescopes off the ground takes decades to occur. The ATLAST telescope is not slated for another 10 years and is our best chance of seeing if life exists 150 light years away.

The article about Fermi's Paradox, and Artificial Intelligence were really good as well. His writing is tedious but once you sift through it the perspectives are valuable.

I think the earnings report coming out tomorrow for Amazon will continue to be a positive. They're relentless in going after new and existing markets. 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) ;D

I think the earnings report coming out tomorrow for Amazon will continue to be a positive. They're relentless in going after new and existing markets.

AMZN

Get rid of the non-essential items in your house. It will save you a lot of time cleaning your house every week