sdev

So fascinating to watch.

Anyone have any opinions regarding the results of the new Brazilian subsidiary?

twacowfca, Yeah that's the only point I was trying to make. In my own opinion it is a good company. The way the company trades (price action) though, I think it's easy for a value investor or any investor for that matter to not get a little confirmation bias. In addition, I don't know how board members know exactly that it is priced at book or below right now except for linear interpolation. The company said on the last conference call they would repurchase at worst a bit over book...and they stopped buying in September at 5.52 (8.62 in dollars). It does no harm to practice some patience before proclaiming victory.

Large expectations leads to disappointment. I am a holder of Lancashire but the way board members regard it as such a sure thing scares me :o

Truly amazing to see how Einhorn isn't even finished with his presentation about St. Joe and shares are down almost 10%...and it's likely that many in the audience own shares.

Thanks for posting these!

I second, what is the Philadelphia Consol story?

Caught the tail end of the call. Seems like business as usual. Can't really ask for much more as a long term holder of this business.

In my opinion ATPG is a buy. It's worth calling up their investor relations and getting the reassurances that their primary wells coming online are not stopped by yourself to give yourself peace of mind. They have an AGM coming up on Friday that might provide more transparency to investors.

What is the cheapest hedge against hurricanes out there? My portfolio would be pretty heavily affected by an extremely destructive storm so I'm kicking around the idea of some cheap insurance. Natural gas options were the first thing that came to mind. Furthermore, individual stocks that are heavily levered with respect to natural gas might have even cheaper options. Any ideas?

I'm of the opinion that their business model of being only opportunistic on the underwriting side is sufficient. It's what they know and what they are comfortable with. They write insurance knowing that the cash will be there when they need it, and the ultra conservative portfolio allows them to confidently redirect excess funds to shareholders (via buybacks at around book value or dividends).

Interesting article, thanks!

little tidbit that came over the ransquawk news wire this morning: Latest News: Fairfax (FRFHF) is said to near USD 1.3bln takeover of insurer Zenith (ZNT)

Wanted to run this entity by the board to see if anybody has insight on it. This is a MLP managed by Brookfield (for a 1.25% market cap annual managment fee) and is invested in various infrastructure assets(http://www.brookfieldinfrastructure.com/_resources/BIP%20Map%20of%20Operations.pdf). They just made a major acquisition funded by a private offering and have released a bunch of pro-forma numbers for what they believe their cash flow from operations and book value is. The presentation is located here: http://www.brookfieldinfrastructure.com/_resources/BIP_November_2009_Profile.pdf I'm a novice investor and am finding it hard to get a sense for what the annual capex for a partnership like this would be and also unsure as to how to value an MLP where increased cashflows result in a greater amount of cash going to the General Partner (BAM). Any insight about these sorts of entities or BIP in general?