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Sounds like you confused some tickers there unintentionally. FIH.U and FFXDF (OTC) are Fairfax India. The others mentioned above are Fairfax Financial.

It seems like approval for Fairfax to own a majority interest in Digit would result in their conversion of the preferred and they would then own 74% and Digit would become a consolidated subsidiary. Currently the 49% interest in Digit is held on the books for about $130 million and is equity accounted and the preferred that could convert to another 25% ownership interest has been marked to the Sequoia Capital valuation. Then presumably Fairfax would sell some Digit in the IPO? I don't know what the accounting treatment is when a hybrid equity method / market to market ownership interest becomes consolidated but it may be a one-time adjustment to book value at the IPO event. I don't see it continually being marked to market at Digit's share price. I guess the 49% will be written up once sort of like Gulf Insurance was just treated upon consolidation. One and done.

Berkshire discloses Marmon's revenues in the annual report and Marmon discloses a more up to date figure ($12 Billion) on their website. We'll get another update on Saturday. Marmon has done several acquisitions and is also the home for most of the operating companies Berkshire bought with Alleghany. Marmon management also ran Duracell when Berkshire acquired it, although it is not part of Marmon. I don't know if Duracell is now run by Marmon or not but I assume it is fully stand-alone reporting to Greg directly now. Marmon bought another business from the Pritzkers, Colson Medical, in 2019, reuniting the companies after Colson was carved out many years ago.

I mentioned it back when it was announced but there was a lot other stuff going on that morning.

The best selling decisions are usually when a new opportunity comes into your life that is so good you start scouring the couch cushions for more capital to buy more. That's when your mature investments trading around intrinsic value get trimmed. It doesn't have to be all or nothing of course. Until that happens or something changes with the firm just let it ride and enjoy the tax deferral. A great lesson from Buffett's partnership days when he actually had more ideas than capital - he was willing to sell out of undervalued positions quickly if another idea came along that was juicer.

My personal capital it isn't a huge percentage anymore. But for some of the separate accounts I mange for others it is very large. One is like 92% although she has maybe 130% long equity exposure so 100% isn't the total. Many of these accounts are in Berkshire with a cost basis averaging around the post - 9/11 market rep-opening price. It was like 2000 on the B-shares at the time, I guess that's like $40 on today's B-shares? That was a major buying period for me and I have sold most of the higher basis shares by now. Most of what I manage is taxable money. I was buying Berkshire before 9/11 in a normal way but that reopening dip was when I bought everything I could. Tax considerations can save you from a lot of foolishness in this game if you aren't naturally wired right for the long holds.

It's a tough call. Berkshire was valued at something like $888 Billion at the highs today. In this market environment I don't see any reason they shouldn't be a 20x owner earnings company. So it's not a crazy valuation. I think for a long time we had great results using price to book as a quick shortcut to valuing Berkshire and maybe that usefulness is waning. There won't be high rates of growth, but some of us have large tax considerations and it really is a tough decision to reduce on valuation alone. Maybe Charlie (munger not dealraker but not much difference in this context) said it best to his heirs, "just hold the goddamn stock."

Weren't those the approximate results that we all expected? Which may have been a major factor in the bull run preceding the earnings announcement? Did you expect a worse Q4 than what was reported?

Now there's someone who will survive a little inflation!

Seem like your track record will be influenced to a great degree by whether or not January 2024 was a good time to go from zero to fully invested in US stocks. Sounds like this isn't a fund? Good luck, I do hope it works out well for you and I like to see the meaningful position sizes.

So is this a new fund you started and fully invested all of it in January 2024? Didn't waste much time getting fully invested.

I usually prefer to own the actual underlying over a non-marginable OTC ticker. I am fine with FFH in Canadian dollars (30% margin requirement for the most part, sometimes 50% since MW report). But in US tax deferred accounts I buy FRFHF because I don't want to buy the CAD before each trade and can't borrow it.

Hmmm. Why is it a good idea to sell a crown jewel just because you can? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-19/truist-nears-sale-of-stake-in-insurance-arm-to-stone-point-cd-r " Truist Agrees to Sell Rest of Insurance Arm to Stone Point, CD&R Deal ‘will further strengthen our balance sheet,’ CEO says Truist Insurance Holdings valued at about $15 billion in deal"

Thanks for the clarification. I primarily use Interactive Brokers in the USA and I can never seem to find FFH.U (the US dollar traded Toronto shares) - does anybody else with IB have access to FFH.U ? Fairfax India shows up no problem.

Well not that it matters much but the newswires are showing that both RBC and BMO have increased their "price targets" for FFH. RBC from $1085 -> 1200 ( I assume this is CAD and they aren't very bullish) USD, good for them BMO from C$1550 -> C$1650

Russia invaded Ukraine?

Well now you are just handing out the answer. This is one remnant of the company Prem and Buffett reference periodically

The hint made me think of RLI (replacement lens insurance for contact lenses originally !!) but despite having a similar return profile since 1999 it isn't the chart you posted. Plus RLI has a data series going back to 1972. Oh well keep guessing

Berkshire writes some very large, very long tail policies. They are a specialist in messy long tail stuff like the Lloyd's deal and the more recent AIG deal. They also write some shorter stuff like 1 season Cat and a lot of what GEICO writes - but I wouldn't say that Berkshire's business is shorter duration than Fairfax's on average. An example: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1541TN/ $10 Billion premium paid to Berkshire up front (float). First claims payments by Berkshire didn't start to go out for many years later. A description from the WSJ at the time: "The agreement with Berkshire’s National Indemnity Co. requires AIG to pay the first $25 billion of claims as they come due. It is expected to be at least several years before Berkshire would begin tapping the roughly $10 billion for its portion of responsibility. The Berkshire unit will pay 80% of net losses and related loss-adjustment expenses if more than the $25 billion is needed for policyholders. Berkshire’s exposure is capped at $20 billion."

There is not a ton of difference really. FFH.TO trades in Canadian dollars and is marginable. FRFHF trades in US dollars and is usually not marginable. Sometimes in a US-domiciled IRA it is easier to buy FRFHF since you can't borrow Canadian dollars and it adds an extra step to first purchase the exact amount of Canadian currency you need to make the trade and then buy the FFH.TO. In taxable accounts I just buy the Toronto listed shares.

I'll agree to disagree on that one!

While a dividend is a dividend, I don't think it will have much of an effect here since Eurobank is receiving equity method accounting. We are already recognizing our full share of Eurobank's profits as profit so a Eurobank dividend won't likely show up in the official 'interest and dividend income.'

Thanks, I couldn't find it in my own downloads. Didn't think to download it again and check the pdf meta data.

Does anybody remember the date that the Annual Report / shareholders letter was released last year? I couldn't find a press release. I suppose I could check my 'downloads' folder..

Were there any surprises in the Q4 earnings? Seems like we knew all of that ahead of time: TRS profit, Micron profit, October bond moves, interest rates move for the quarter, lack of big Cats, etc