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Press release for Fairfax India https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/05/02/2874791/0/en/Fairfax-India-Holdings-Corporation-First-Quarter-Financial-Results.html This PDF is better: https://www.fairfaxindia.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024_05_May_02-PRFIH-Q1-2024-Press-Release-Final.pdf

Nice, so they repurchased 240,734 shares during the quarter - $260.3 million worth. 3/31 share count is 22,831,173 shares

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/05/02/2874789/0/en/Fairfax-India-Holdings-Corporation-Financial-Results-for-the-First-Quarter.html Press release pdf: https://www.fairfax.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024_05_May_02-PRFFH-Q1-2024-Press-Release-Final.pdf

Seems like FFH share repurchases should come in around $195 million in the quarter but I may be double counting some shares. We'll see how far off I am later. https://ceo.ca/api/sedi/?symbol=ffh&amount=&transaction=&insider=Fairfax

It's funny, with Fairfax, nobody points to the bond portfolio and panics over the idle cash. They get busy calculating the spread between 95% combined ratio cost of capital and +4.5% investment yield. At Berkshire it sits in 3 month and 6 month bills and it's some huge problem. If Warren moved $150 billion to 3 and 5 year treasury notes would everybody stop worrying about the "cash problem" and call him a genius like Brian Bradstreet? Can we just call most of Berkshire's cash the "bond portfolio" and be done with the 'big cash problem' talk?

pdf of the article. Go ahead and remove it if an opinion section excerpt is some kind of copyright issue. Why Fairfax Financial.pdf

So it's kind of a bullshit article because they don't know which investors bought which stocks. Several of their guesses appear to be incorrect. These are likely wrong: Aon: Buffett Capital One: Buffett Celanese: Combs/Weschler (not sure) General Motors: Combs/Weschler (not sure) Lee Enerprises: Combs/Weschler PNC Financial: Buffett S&P 500 ETF: Buffett VeriSign: Combs/Weschler Verisk Analytics: Combs/Weschler (they also don't do enough research to figure out the actual buy and sell prices to calculate the returns, using 13F quarter-end data instead)

Thanks for posting - nice to see they got the green light to stream the annual movie on CNBC - I'm sure there will be some great stuff in there this year.

pretty sneaky how you subliminally inserted the nutrition information of the Tim Hortons menu into your post

I don't think Q1 will be that bad. Partly because of the offsetting IFRS discount effect but primarily because the real meat of the bond sell-off started the day after the quarter ended. Q1 was pretty tame. We'll see how Q2 and the rest of the year unfolds but I'm not expecting 2-7 year treasuries to stick around with a 5-handle on the yield for more than a few days. There is a lot of demand for those securities at 5%. I know I'm a broken record on that but watch the 2 year - at 5% buyers come flooding back in, which is unsurprising.

did that article ever mention that it is unlikely that Warren Buffett was the one who actually bought the MKL stock? It was a lot of words without saying much so I couldn’t read it all.

In case anybody hasn't read "Trillion Dollar Triage" and has an interest in the history of Fed independence from the White House, this article is basically a big excerpt from the first part of the book - https://www.wsj.com/economy/central-banking/a-brief-history-of-the-feds-uneasy-peace-with-the-white-house-608dee30?mod=hp_lead_pos4

It depends on the subsidiary and how the bulkheads are constructed. I believe a subsidiary of BHE, like Pacificorp for instance, can be put into bankruptcy without the other assets of BHE being risked, much less the parent company holding company. But I'm sure there are exceptions for nefarious asset stripping or fraud. I mean, look at JNJ and the Talc stuff - you don't see all of JNJ at risk.

Warren always said there are certain businesses where you aren't well served by having a "rich parent." He never contemplated being a helmet manufacturer, was one of his examples if I remember correctly. I think his mindset from the insurance industry has served him well over the years in considering as many risks in his other businesses as he can - which is why he gets a little crabby when he misses some.

"In the future" can be an awfully long way away. I wouldn't base your investment decisions on an article citing birth rates and trends. The United States is uniquely positioned as being a very desirable (and apparently easy to sneak into LOL) destination for young, productive (and fertile), immigrants. Many other countries have much more serious demographic problems.

The founder managed to sell a few decent sized blocks at high prices. One of them to a "private fund" which sounded to me like a fund covering a short position. Predictably, they filed a preliminary prospectus to issue a ton of shares if they can get it going in time. Today's volume is high so maybe they got some shares sold? https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1843974/000157587224000368/es106_n2.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1843974/000157587224000367/xslF345X05/ownership.xml

HomeServices has settled their antitrust suit - https://www.wsj.com/business/telecom/warren-buffetts-real-estate-firm-settles-antitrust-matter-for-250-million-e77e87d8 " Dusseault said HomeServices faced potential bankruptcy if it didn’t settle. To even appeal the verdict it likely would have needed to post a bond, which a judge could have set in the billions of dollars. If Berkshire had instead stepped in to bail out its subsidiary, it would have set a precedent that could make other companies under its umbrella an appealing target for litigation. "

I expected a higher GDP print (and I'm always bearish LOL). I think rail traffic is actually fairly normal if you ignore Coal volumes. I don't think coal volumes are a big economic red flag personally. There is some shifting back towards the western railroads again I would imagine. I would expect BNSF to print a decent intermodal number. Auto shipments are high. Petroleum products and chemicals are high. Looks healthy to me as far as rail traffic goes.

https://nlpc.org/corporate-integrity-project/video-nlpc-returns-to-berkshire-hathaway-annual-meeting-one-year-after-chairmans-arrest/ Oh joy... This guy is coming to rant about Bill Gates and Epstein again.

Thanks - these transcripts are getting pretty good. How do they get a name like Gobinath's perfectly transcribed? Must not be AI?

Go short because IFRS is confusing?

Jaygo I notice you always spell "debt" with a "p" - is that a keyboard thing or a country of origin thing or what? Just curious since it has been consistent.

I am certainly not an expert in any of this but I have heard the idea is to have over 100 different things (drones, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles) arriving around the same time at vastly different speeds, altitudes and directions - hoping to confuse the various air defense systems. With so much preparation I assume close to all of them will be shot down but odds are a couple will get through.

Bitcoin was probably the only market that was open. If you feel like reducing risk and raising cash, you go with the markets that are currently open. Bitcoin is always open.

I saw the founder / promoter / whatever you call him sold $4.5m worth at $30/sh. I assume he has sold more since if allowed to. I am unclear if they can issue new shares at a premium to NAV any time soon. I covered my short with all the Levine attention but it’s been an entertaining and profitable distraction. I even held a short overnight one night