Ballinvarosig Investors

If Berkshire had sold out of WFC, surely they would have had to file a 13D to indicate that their stake is below 5%? I think he probably sold quite a bit of WFC, but I wouldn't be surprised if he blew out JPM entirely. Out of all Berkshire's financials, JPM are probably the most exposed to unsecured consumer lending, which is probably not a place where you want to be in this environment.

Started buying a starter position in LLOY at 30p today. Trading at nearly half of tangible book value now. Its dividend and buy back program has been suspended which has shaken out a lot of the income investors and removed some of the positive momentum. They have already taken a lump of covid related impairments in their Q1 results with more to follow in Q2 - even at that they will still be very well capitalised. Of all the British lenders, they would have one of the most conservative books and are probably akin to the likes of a WFC. If we get to a scenario where Lloyds is in trouble, that is the day when most of the rest of the UK banking system is in even worse shape and we're looking at mass nationalisation like we saw in 2007. If Lloyds can weather this crisis like I think it can, then it's trading about about 5-6x normalised earnings. My guess is that it could be a double in 2 years at these prices.

Not sure what you mean by this. As per the above post, it looks like he's bought back 1.2% of stock in Q2. This is pretty meaningful activity if you ask me.

Thank God.

“Because Americans are the dumbest investors around, and there's lots of liquidity in this market.” George Economou, CEO of Dryships

I think you are wrong on this one. Torstar was clearly a mistake and the chances of it turning around at this stage are very, very slim. If anything, it's more likely the equity here is going to zero, especially with covid blowing a hole in the balance sheet. My guess is that Fairfax realise this, but they also recognise that Torstar is a Canadian institution with a lot of jobs and history at stake. I am sure that Prem could push for an aggressive liquidation, or perform some asset stripping to squeeze a little bit of extra value, but do you think he is really going to destroy his and Fairfax's reputation for a few pennies? No, I think the proposed deal is more about going private, being able to save some money, having two dedicated owner operators who with both try and give Torstar its best chance at survival. This sort of thing is not unknown in the newspaper biz these days. We had a newspaper group here in Ireland that was majority owned by insiders, had €80m net cash, was cash flow positive, yet it got sold for just €145m. These types of business are being priced for death probably because they are dead.

Agree. If Buffett was to leave, or die tomorrow, then I think the stock is likely to go on a tear from where it is. The stock is clearly cheap on a historical basis, just to revert to mean there is upside there alone. Whoever comes in after Buffett is likely to step on the gas with regards to buybacks, which Buffett has always seemed to be cagey about. One of the big factors few people talk about is Buffett's 31% stake unwinding. Once that unwinds, there is going to be an automatic bid from index funds which are float adjusted which will be required to buy more Berkshire as Buffett's estate sells Buffett's stake is going to take a LONG time to unwind, but once it starts happening, I expect Berkshire to go on a generational charge, a bit like Microsoft did when Bill Gates took his stake from 24% to 1% today. Berkshire is obviously not as good a business as Microsoft, but it's still quite strong. I could easily see Berkshire providing a 15% annualised return over the 10 years from after Buffett dies.

I have been buying Markel. Never thought I would be given a chance to get it at a cheap price again, but here we are. Looks like it's slightly better value than Berkshire to me as well.

Just tried to bid while the price was within my wheelhouse - seems like non US people are forbidden from taking part. Ships to: United States

Here's a share for you that I have recently bought that I think is very cheap. Daejan Holdings, a UK property company (also diversified to the US) with a long-term track record of growth. Trades at half tangible NAV and is conservatively financed.

It's one year until elections. Democrats are favourites to win, and Elizabeth Warren is currently the favoured candidate. What is not to say that she wins and snuffs out any chance of "reform" (i.e. a taxpayer bailout) of Fannie/Freddie holders? I am considerably more right wing than Liz, and even I think that ALL common and ALL preferred shares should simply be cancelled. I don't see much of an appetite anywhere to bail out people who probably should have been zeroed back in the crisis.

That video - wow. I see one of his top 5 picks is now Amazon.

Vadim Perelman and Baker Street have to go down as the very worst. Imagine taking nearly one billion dollars and turning it into nothing. This is an astonishing achievement to have made in then past ten years in which we have had a fantastic bull market.

I did laugh at this Twitter comment.

If you do a twitter search, it's very easy to find.

Excluding goodwill and intangibles, tangible book value at Sears is now negative $5.5b. Is there anywhere near that amount of value left in the company? Quite frankly I don't see how there possibly could be. In terms of non-property assets, there's maybe $1b there between Home Services, reinsurance biz, and Diehard/Kenmore. For the property assets, the last 10k told us that Sears owns just 300 stores, along with 10 distribution centers and their HQ with 800 of their stores being leased. If 235 properties were spun-out into Seritage with a valuation of $1.6b, what do the remaining property assets of Sears get? Even assuming that all the good ones haven't sold, we're looking at maybe $2b-2.5b, still leaving us with $2b in negative equity but ignoring the negative $2b in operating cash flow that this thing is bleeding. If you want any further proof that Sears equity is a zero, you just need to look at Eddie Lampert's recent actions. The $500m offer to buy the home services/Kenmore business and other offer to buy some of the remaining real estate in a sale and leaseback clearly illustrates that he himself can only see the value of these assets realized outside of the dumpster fire that is Sears Holdings. When you combine the sales with the high interest rates that the company is paying on ESL held debt, it's clear what's happening here is an exercise in damage limitation for Eddie. He's going to torch the equity to save what he can from the bonds. Let's see what happens, but my guess is that we are finally at end game here for Sears Holdings. There's $500m in quarterly operating losses to fund with no liquidity and with few assets that can be quickly sold. Quick ratio, Piotrski, and Altman Z scores for this company have went from danger to flashing red imminent risk of bankruptcy. If Home Services and Kenmore can be sold, that might buy them another 6 months. After that, it is surely only a matter of months until this has to be restructured. My guess is that they file for bankruptcy early next year. Between now and then, I think Eddie will be doing what he can to plug the pension gap and to protect the bonds.

Whitney Tilson's parents were both teachers and certainly not rich.

Lucked into some good trades? He has beaten the pants off the s&p.

Like Putin is a good guy, and everything you hear about him and his despotic regime is all propaganda? Magnitsky, Crimea, Donetsk, South Ossetia, Syria, Skripal, Litvinenko, Kara-Murza, the dozens of journalists killed in Russia, and numerous other minor Russian political opponents who have found themselves shot, disappeared, hanged mysteriously, thrown off buildings, etc. No doubt, all these things are Western fabrication, lies, propaganda. Liberty, I think you were right the first time. The fact that Putin is fighting back so vociferously, it makes me think that maybe the politicians are actually doing something right for once.

I believe it was something more like 2-3 times per year. We know they have been together at least once a year because of the annual meeting. And it turns out there is also one off-site directors meeting each year. Apologies, yes, twice in the last year.

Interesting comments for me were.. The economy is growing slightly faster than in previous years. Charlie and Warren have only met once in the last 2 years. Warren seems to like Apple a lot. Warren also seems to think that USG should look at a "strategic alternative" - in other words, he does not like the business in the long-term, he would be happy to be bought out.

Here's a preview - https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/05/04/buffett-interview-.html Interesting comments for me were.. The economy is growing slightly faster than in previous years. Charlie and Warren have only met once in the last 2 years. Warren seems to like Apple a lot. Warren also seems to think that USG should look at a "strategic alternative" - in other words, he does not like the business in the long-term, he would be happy to be bought out.

Is it really that cheap though? $1.05bn investments, take out $270m for deferred taxes and debt and you have net investments of $780m. Add in $500m valuation on fast food biz (12x normalized earnings), $50 first guard (12x normalized earnings) and a $0 for Maxim. Using a 2m share count (to prevent double counting as repurchased stock is included in investments), you get a total value of $1,330m. Take 20% off that for the Biglari greed discount and you have a valuation of $1,072m. Current market cap is $875m. This looks a little cheaper than it should, but is it really worth getting involved in for such a small discount? Oops, typo in my calculations, $685m looks more accurate. Hmm.

Is it really that cheap though? $1.05bn investments, take out $270m for deferred taxes and debt and you have net investments of $780m. Add in $500m valuation on fast food biz (12x normalized earnings), $50 first guard (12x normalized earnings) and a $0 for Maxim. Using a 2m share count (to prevent double counting as repurchased stock is included in investments), you get a total value of $1,330m. Take 20% off that for the Biglari greed discount and you have a valuation of $1,072m. Current market cap is $875m. This looks a little cheaper than it should, but is it really worth getting involved in for such a small discount?

Good article on Tilson and his shutting down of his hedge fund. http://www.institutionalinvestorsalpha.com/Article/3795338/The-Last-Days-of-Whitney-Tilsons-Kase-Capital.html?ArticleId=3795338&r=notverified