Partner24

Buy the ones who are shrinking their business and sell the ones who are not. Well, that's a good start! :D The three companies that you have listed above are cheap and well managed.

No. It's tought to me to get a clear view about the long term consequences of the recent turmoil around Toyota (in doubt, I try to avoid) and the long term growth prospects of TM are somewhat limited. JMO.

They will be probably released after market close today because their conference call is tomorrow morning at 10:30 a.m. http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=104364&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1380852&highlight=

The day was wrong. It will be done in a few days. Cheers!

Regarding Westaim, Cameron MacDonald seem to be the new jockey here. He's a GoodWood fund manager and a focused value investor. I do not know him and have not heard of him before that transaction. It would be interesting to dig more about him. He seems to want to shift Westaim toward a diversified conglomerate with good businesses bought at good prices. Does somebody know more about him? Regarding Jevco, I don't know much about that insurance company. They seem to be a specialized insurer in automotive industry (higher risk profiles) and have recently diversified into more traditional fields. Somebody have more information about that company? It could be a TIG kind of situation, but it also could be a Northbridge one. That's what I'm trying to figure out actually. A jewel or a poisoned kool-aid glass?

1,065 at National Bank Direct Brokerage. I would prefer FFH to convert that money into Canadian dollar themselves since they have far more negociation power with 200 millions dollars than every one of us with our own individual account.

If I was an owner of a toaster store, and several miscreants would try to close my shop with repeated public lies, fraud, diffamation, etc. I would'nt just still sell toasters and let them keep doing that without any personal reply. Patrick Byrne has balls. He is a real boxer and he's a cancer survivor. If he did just kept selling toasters like too much executives do, these miscreants would still kill several public companies with infamy and injustice without any serious consequence. To me, he deserve a lot of admiration for his fight for the right cause. That being said, I think he is getting quite emotive (a very understandable behavior in these circumstances) and it is dangerous to make mistakes when you feel like that. Prem strategy to be quiet for some time and then strongly fight back in court is a good one too. But, I think that Patrick's public replies helped a lot of people to realize what is truly happening and why these guys must be stopped. What he has accomplished so far is mind blowing to me. Without him, I wonder what would happen with these miscreants today.

Well,: the main pros that I see: 1) at least we are not diluted as common shareholders 2) it's financialy safer than debt 3) cost of that capital on the short term basis is reasonable the main cons that I see: 1) are we getting too much outside capital thirsty? Do we really need that cash now? 2) why giving us dividends and then re-issue capital? ??? 2) the mid and long term cost of that capital is variable, so unknown at this time. 3) dividend is not tax deductible

FFHWatcher, You bring a very good question. There are things that are important in investing and in wich you can predict with a high enough level of confidence (that are within your circle of competence), and things that are important in investing and wich you can't predict with a high enough level of confidence. Macroeconomical stuff is unfortunately in the number two category for me. Just an example. If you would have asked me five years ago what would happen with overall Canadian residential real estate, I would not have been really optimistic, but I knew that I wasn't knowledgable enough to put my money in this prediction, and rightly so because 5 years later, it's not going that bad after all. Am I optimistic for the next 10 years? No. Will I try to find an investment product to materialize and try to make money on that sentiment? No, because it's not within my circle of competence enough. Does that mean that nobody can predict macro stuff? Absolutely not, but I remain skeptical on predictions, because very very few get the calls right over and over again.

But I hate automatically getting screwed on the exchange rate. They do make far more $ with me with their exchange rate conversion hidden fee than with their trading fee. It's like the seller who would say: our cars are cheap...but you will have to tank with us solely. I don't have the exchange rate negociating power that FFH have and I wonder what is the value added for FFH to give us dividends in US $. By the way, do most of the shares are held by canadian shareholders or US shareholders? I would guess canadians, but I don't know for sure.

"Great line Partner" Thank you, but I don't deserve the credit for it. I've heard it at the FFH 2007 AGM. Prem was making jokes about the three letters different meanings of FFH and said about this particular one something like "We are not there yet, but...".

My top pick for the new year: Found Financial Heaven ;)

"Partner, If it is easy as you suggest to identify beforehand which of the Phoenix type of investments that Prem has made will work out perhaps you could identify today amongst the various fallen angels that FFH has exposure to will work out and why". Well, there is the "home run or 3 strikes/out" situations, there is the base hits and some grayer stuff between the two. I think it's reasonable to say that The Brick is a fixable situation and, based on what I've heard about him, the actual surgeon is a skilled one. I'm not 100% sure that it will work out, but I'm more confortable with that than some others who have poor balance sheet and strong and secular headwins. If you're looking at the safer base hits, Johnson and Johnson and Kraft Foods are among them. Maybe they will not work out, but frankly it's more difficult to me to conceptually "kill" them over the short and mid terms than some others. That all being said, Prem and team batting average is terrific and they mostly invest in pretty different kind of situations that I'm usually confortable with. These situations are mostly within their own circle of competence, not mine. A good tool to figure that out is to ask yourself if you can find a way to conceptually "kill" the business and if you think it would be easy or not. How can you kill Berkshire, Procter and Gamble, Coca-Cola, etc.? Would that be easy? Nothing is impossible, but...

"Ex-ante, you really don't know which outcome you will get" Stubble, while I respect and appreciate your opinion, I disagree with it. There is a huge difference with a localized cancer operated with a skilled surgeon and a generalized cancer operated by a plumber. Abitibi was a "generalized cancer" situation and it doesn't take a 200 IQ to understand that. Canwest were a grayer situation, but still a generalized cancer with tons of debt on top of that. There is the Berkshire, Johnson and Johnson, Wells Fargo, Walmart, etc." of this world, an there is the "Abitibi, TIG, Canwest, etc." of this world. And...there is the other ones between the two "categories". Some have times on their friends, some have time as their enemies. Cheers!

It's very tough to get any firm insight on these supposed facts until they are verified and proved. A lawyer for Jiang didn't return several phone calls. Tong's lawyer, Parisis Filippatos, said his client could not be reached for comment. A spokesman for the prosecutors' office in Brooklyn declined to comment. It's not clear why the investigation in Brooklyn ended without any action being taken. Nor is it clear what precipitated the inquiry. A related investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission into Tong's sexual harassment allegation was closed in April 2008 with the agency taking no action against the hedge fund or Tong's former boss. I do not want to defend SAC by any way. By the way, I'm not a particular fan of cryogenically dead sharks... http://longorshortcapital.com/efficiency-in-wasting-money.htm Recommendation: We see a long term rise in top-tier spenders’ ability to fritter away stupefying amounts of money. Go long cyrogenically-frozen elephants, a likely next target for money-wasting.

Terrific indeed. Thank you Sanjeev for posting it. Cheers!

In my opinion, FFH is a perfect fit for the Davis family investment style. Regarding AIG, as far as I know, it's been a Davis family holding since decades ago.

"shorts can suck it" I have nothing to add, except for that I wonder if we would not get the quarterly holdings anymore...

"Jack is gone but he is a shareholder, trust Barrette and gives him his voting rights" Yes, I know. But that being said, even if he trust him and that's ok to do that, Barrette is not Jack. But that being said, even when Jack was there, I was preferring MKL and FFH anyway. Cheers!

Yes, but since Jack is gone, I like it less. Prefer FFH and MKL. Cheers!

Stephen, Thank you for sharing your inspiration. Partner

I've followed Alleghany over the years, but never bought some shares because I preferred other holding companies. I didn't like their MBS investments and called the IR department about that. The guy took time to speak with me and I did get some answers, but was not satisfied by them, so I preferred to stay with FFH and others only. Cheers!

Even this board has selective hearing. Oreilles de c..! Hi Omagh, and wich stock was that? Thanks.

"The price quote means far less to me than the specifics of the Q3 report..." So, you're looking at what's happening on the basebal field instead of the scoreboard that his managed by a drunk and depressive fellow ;-) I'm on your side Steve! Cheers!

Let me guess just for fun: - Fairfax is an insurance company - Insurance is boring, unless something really bad happens (AIG, hurricanes, etc.) But anyway, the weighing machine will do it's job over time...just too busy with more popular stocks actually ;-)