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His exit in 2011 ended a career where he was frequently cited as the frontrunner to succeed Buffett, a trajectory that was fueled by his ability to step into "broken" businesses and make them profitable. I'm surprised that David Sokol has been more involved in the equities side of Fairfax. Or fixer of businesses.

Is there a stock-step up upon death? So, it's might be beneficial for them to get the stock on death and then, liquidate with limited tax consequences and put into indexes then. If you enjoy doing it, I would continue to do what you enjoy... whether it is investing, playing pickleball, traveling or mixture of it.... Again, if investing it taking away from engaging your family when they need you or special moments... that's an addiction with negative consequences.. but, again, it's about balance.. if you can sleep better at night with indexes that's great.. but, again, the next generation is generally smart enough to put in indexes if they don't like to invest personally. It's like Giorgio Armani's will... sell this sucker in 18 months after I pass. Write in your will.... "It was fun while it lasted... but, liquidate in 18 months and put into indexes...." lol

@Spekulatius - Definitely more competition, but when I review Valueline for categories/sectors to invest in, these exchanges seem to be one of the better barrels to fish in. The competition hasn't really affected their gross/net margins. Everyone seems to have their niche. Even the battle between NYSE(ICE) /NASD haven't lead to a race to the bottom.

Last thought about Buffett's retirement.... and the big shoes that Greg Abel needs to fill... essentially... Greg Abel has his Mid-American job... but, also, the large shoes of Warren Buffett... and to a certain extent Charlie Munger... that's a lot of talent that Greg has to make up for. Also, he still has Ajit's insurance prowess to replace. Again, I hope Greg does well, but that's a huge talent drain to make up for. He needs to start promoting or identifying his next Charlie, Ajit... and trusting if Ted would be the next Warren/Todd Combs/investment guru.

Regarding your article, Bottle rationalized price increases. If you didn't know better, Harry Bottle might have been proto-Michael Pearson before Valeant Pharma. lol. 1.An item 100% proprietary, not available except from us. Increase up to 500%. 2.An item semi proprietary – Increase 200-300%. 3.Nonproprietary – Increase 0 to 100%.

I feel there are certain "fixers" that Warren Buffett ran into. There's only a few transformational managers that you can run into in one's life. Harry Bottle seems to be one of them. Elon Musk has a fixer/fixer team. Dempster seemed like a quick turnaround and he eventually sold..but, eventually got into BRK, which he didn't use Harry Bottle, but Ken Chase. You would think Harry Bottle would be his fixer and show up again. Two, Buffett ran into similar issues with Buffalo News, which again hurt him...But, this time, he brought in another fixer, Stanford Lipsey.... What is also interesting... when he bought See's Candies, it wasn't broken, but he promoted Chuck Huggins. Seems like he brings in a fixer or his guy that is promoted within.

These exchanges are modern day toll booths. Considering the net operating margins, I would think the returns would be better for all the exchanges. Strange.

2025 - 138.45% 2024 - 41.80% 2023 - 27.10% 2022 - (2.16%) 2021 - 10.05% 2020 - 16.34% As many of you know, I have been mostly concentrated in European bank stocks, but currently rebalancing as tax efficiently as possible. No bitcoin, no Mag 7, no Fairfax or Berkshire, generally no tech during this period.

His hobby and passion was investing! LOL.

@Xerxes @Eng12345 - When I read "Dark Side of Fortune", it showed how one can use the government to protect foreign (oil) assets by Edward Doheny. Yes, history does rhyme a lot -- so it helps my investing models. A year ago, I read a book on Masa Son of Softbank fame and it pretty much told him his thoughts on ARM Holdings, pre-IPO and how he sizes bets. Also, when I read "The Founders" by Jimmy Soni -- I got background of Palantir and also, their guesstimate on PayPal's fair value and how hard it is to get into fintech...which informed my thoughts on moats in banking/financial industries. Just looking for tidbits here and there... Sometimes, it's just a random paragraph here and there. Also, as a side note, in reading "Dark Side of Fortune" -- I was amazed at how many time Teddy Roosevelt shows ups. He's a baller.

@Xerxes @Eng12345 - Do any of the books help you value or understand some recent investments in oil? Or any other supporting companies?

I am actually surprised that CPNG is so high on the list. I like and own CPNG myself... but, considering the investments Bom Kim has to make in Taiwan and how long term oriented he is on his investments.. it might be 3-5 years before he shuts the investment spigot down and the CF comes down to the bottom line. He's still investing in Farfetch, he's trying to create a Korean version of AWS, he's scaling out Taiwan, he's probably investing more in security after the recent breach, there's still more investments in his warehouses/logistics, and building out the flywheel..... I expect him to be marginally profitable for a long, long time. Even if CPNG doubles in 2026, I'll probably still hold for many more years...

We talked about MELI and CPNG as examples of SES. I wanted to know if there are any chinese companies that leverage this model? Are there examples of SES in communistic or socialistic countries? Possibly, Spotify...but, with large companies in China, does anyone have examples from there?

@Rainier - Based on the table above, all seem to be in the PE range of 21-24 (twenties). All the metrics seem comparable too. I was looking at OTCM and you're not getting a lot of discount for their smaller size/market capitalization..so, that's why I was inquiring with the group. It's seems like the same fish in the same barrel... so minus well got for the larger market leaders unless I'm missing something. It's almost like Visa and Mastercard to me. They have reach valuations, but they're legal oligopolies. I know people say you cannot go wrong.. but, there's always a Coke to a Pepsi... Like for the longest time, there's a premium to the front runners... like back in the day, Intel was a better market performer than AMD. Oracle always performed better than Sybase and Informix.

@Fly - You're right. It's never the steady compounders or strangely, any of the Magnificent 7. It's some crazy, off-the-beaten path, flyer that is high alpha and beta lottery ticket pick... LOL.

Good summary of the book - https://novelinvestor.com/notes/the-memoirs-of-walter-j-schloss-by-walter-schloss/

Is there a reason why many of your gravitate to the smaller exchanges when the larger securities (ICE, CME, NDAQ) have roughly the same margins and has scale/marketing/larger balance sheet as a tailwind? I love a David and Goliath story, but you have to give me some odds for David.

@villainx That'll kill the moment/mode definitely... Do it strategically.. post massage or after you two finish dinner.... and then, talk about your rate of return right before bedtime and all the stuff you two can afford.... and let the magic happen!

@dealraker Of your basket of exchanges, which is your favorite? I was looking into CME and ICE.... but honestly, with all this trading via Citadel, IBKR, Robinhood, etc.... their volume shouldn't go lower.... plus, NDAQ is looking into 24 hour trading.. that cannot hurt the business model. This might be a good sector to buy... Is there an ETF to buy the barrel? It might be just shooting fish in a barrel.

I don't think there are many businesses that are idiot proof... But, the stock will have a huge discount until they leave... or the margins will be subpar and eventually, the moat will erode.

@formthirteen - I don't have a lot of patience lately for sub-optimal management. So, that LSEG thing, I might need to dig in further on... Do you feel any of those companies have pretty smart, owner operators? Do you look at insider ownership?

@Rainier The economics of these exchanges are pretty amazing. I've been reviewing their Valueline write-ups - CME, CBOE, ICE seems the most interesting to me. I think scale matters here. @formthirteen - I would be interesting in your thought on what overpaying for some of these are. I feel some of these can be like Visa and Mastercard over the long run. You can be roughly right and still make a lot of money.

@gfp @Munger_Disciple - I would say those are not companies with large TAMs. They're best in class, but it's a big store in a small town. For example, See's could slowly expand like how Bucee's and InNOut is expanding to the East Coast. Slowly and methodically. See's never scaled to be a Nestle, Hershey's, Mars, etc. Precision CastParts, Iscar are good companies, but they are not like ASML. BSNF and Geico have potential to be dominant, but some how underinvested relative to UNP and Progressive, respectively. National Indemnity -- maybe, if you want to be a reinsurance.. but, what happens after Ajit.... I'll like to see the contingency plan there. GEICO and insurance should have been in Warren's wheelhouse. He had an advantage when he was only selling to army and government employees, but the data analytics of Progressive evened the playing field. Also, Diary Queen... it's sub scale... I mean... crap... who here goes to a Diary Queen. Has anyone visited NFM? It cannot compete against Wayfair and all those Furniture South in NC.

@Xerxes - Out of all the subsidiaries of BRK, Greg might be the best person to understand the culture, but would you say Greg Abel is a Fortune 25 CEO if he wasn't at MidAmerica -- because he's running that size of a company. Even David Sokol didn't bounce back at a Fortune 25 company. He seems to be a good fit at FFH, but still it's not the same statue at BRK.

The same way one could have said Benjamin Moore should be Sherman Williams like GEICO should have been Progressive. One can say Progressive and Sherman Williams has a tougher road to get capital from bankers that need to justify to BoD and short term focused shareholders.. yet, BM and GEICO just had to justify to one bellybutton. Maybe, capital ask was easy.. but, strategy or vision was not at those respective companies?