BargainValueHunter

Along similar lines... http://www.cnbc.com/id/46446225

http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424052748703786004577221581670997506.html They liked CIT a year and a half ago too... http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424052970203599504575535821640571024.html#articleTabs_panel_article%3D1

Apple and one other company drive most of the S&P 500 earnings growth. Tell your friends what the other company is and watch their heads explode! ;) http://bit.ly/yKm1El

It doesn't cost me anything to look into ANY company's financial structure and situation to see if there is any value there in relation to the current price. Even after they declare bankruptcy their may be value in their bonds. I'll take a look at any company before applying capital to an investment. When I first heard of Fairfax the headlines for the company were terrible. Yeah, a completely different situation but I am glad I didn't listen to the FFH bashers without taking a look first! ;)

Its getting a little more interesting now... http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Diamond-Foods-worth-44-break-theflyonthewall-2691932330.html?x=0 http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/story/11410065/1/pringles-deal-may-pop-for-diamond-foods-analysts.html?cm_ven=YAHOO&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA

You may be onto something... http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2012/02/09/taking-a-bullish-flyer-on-diamond-foods/

I have trouble seeing the value here... http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=DMND+Balance+Sheet&annual I guess DMND could be worth maybe $15 per share but the walnut growers may decide to ship elsewhere which is a danger. Does the company have any hidden assets?

Did they interview them again? If so, that would be cool! :) http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/berkshire-hathaway/warren-buffett-wants-son-to-succeed-him/msg63886/#msg63886 60 Minutes sometimes does follow-up stories so a recap would be interesting.

Bruce's mistake was not doing enough to dissuade potential investors who saw his numbers in Money Magazine and just wanted in without knowing what value investing is. It is an open ended fund so he takes all comers but during interviews I think he should have emphasized the severe sector concentration and the potential danger to "return chaser types" for intense, if temporary, losses. Perhaps, if financials are his core competency, he should start a fourth fund called "Fairholme Financial Fund" and make the original a non-financial fund (which I guess would pretty much just be SHLD...maybe he could call it the "Fairholme Sears Holding Fund" lol). My respect has grown for him simply because he has stuck to his core value principles during a hellish period. How many other fund managers have that sort of conviction? I don't think he is going to be chasing AAPL and FB anytime soon!

http://newyorkfed.org/markets/maidenlane.html#tabs-3 http://newyorkfed.org/markets/maidenlane.html#tabs-4

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203315804577207512182614078.html

Fairholme's AIG case study has been posted: http://bit.ly/xUUmuh

I admit I haven't done nearly the research that Berkowitz has done on AIG's financials but I still can't understand the current negative sentiment about the company. If your talking about 2000-2008 that is a different story. Bob Benmosche and his team seem to be doing a great job of turning the company back into a plain vanilla insurance company like Moynihan is turning BAC back into a plain vanilla bank. That should be cause for celebration but Bruce B. seems to be alone in his sentiment. They seem to have the same issues facing other life insurers but that is only a part of their global business. The near constant disasters of 2010 and 2011 should push prices up soon and the Feds are being passive until AIG is ~$30 but the UST hasn't indicated that it would dump the shares on the market at once. Perhaps all of the attention (deservedly) being paid to Apple and (undeservedly, in my opinion) to Facebook is keeping the attention away from comeback companies like AIG.

Take a look @ Montpelier Re... http://finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=mrh

I agree 100%. But you'll probably get trashed by some on this board for saying it. They think that just because someone has done great for a while that they can never do wrong. They will sell a stock when Mr. Market pushes it stupidly high but when all that money came into Fairholme and Berkowitz decided he was going to try and be a Buffett or Lampert and it was weak money that was driving the price they would say you were stupid for selling Fairholme. He should have stuck with what he knows and what the long term investors originally bought into. No matter how great the St. Joe land development story might turn out, he should stick with what he had made his name doing. I think it was more of a matter of luck than anything else in making that decision. If things had worked out, this conversation wouldn't even be happening. So when investors think they know more than proven long-term investment managers, I'm thinking that may be the case in just a handful of situations. In most circumstance, it's because the investor was lucky. When Prem made the bet to buy TIG and C&F, no one thought that was a bad deal at the time. As big as the deal was, there was considerable protection in place...buying at 60-70% of book, a billion dollar reinsurance contract protecting against future losses, and paying with overvalued shares. Yet the deal went wrong because the losses were just far greater than the reinsurance policy could cover. Was that someone getting a big head, or just something that went wrong even though all the precautions were in place? Berkowitz didn't do anything differently than he has in his past, but the bets went the wrong way because he was early. If anyone thinks that a year or two is enough to judge a fund managers performance, than I think they are simply speaking from the obvious view of "what have you done for me lately!" Investors on this board always talk about long-term or how they will hold forever, but when things go sideways, investors rarely think about long-term. In Berkowitz's case, most of his "long-term" investors were thinking solely from a "short-term" view. And as I said at that time, they will be proven wrong in the long-term. Short-term, if they pulled their money, it was more of a matter of luck in timing, because that's exactly what it is...timing! Cheers! Well said regarding the conventional investor's view on Berkowitz and the luck of getting out at the right time. However, it's worth pointing out that the folks on this thread who have expressed pretty negative views on Berkowitz appear to be criticizing him for the investment in JOE and, specifically, for his trying to take over the company and run it better (their words, not mine). I'd like to hear more from them on why they think he's trying to run the company and whether they would have different views of him if he had not put any money into JOE. I was always under the impression that Berkowitz wanted control so he could install like minded people on the board and the executive suite. I don't think he ever intended to be an everyday COO. Once he found some good "cut expenses, monetize assets" type of folks he would tone down the activism. Besides JOE was never a huge percentage of his holdings. I am surprised people haven't given him a hard time over his CIT (Thain) affiliation even if he is passive there.

Fairholme shareholders continue to do to Berkowitz what Dr. Michael Burry's shareholders did to him...pull their investments at exactly the wrong time! Gotta be extremely frustrating for a fund manager. http://www.gurufocus.com/news/160240/fairholme-funds-portfolio-update-forced-to-sell-finanicals

Would have been nice if he had fleshed out his "other reasons" for staying bullish on SHLD... Nice letter, though! :)

Thanks Jacob from ValueWalk!! :) http://www.valuewalk.com/2012/01/fairholme-brutal-year-performance-32-aum-declines-70/#.Tyb69lyCkhU

Sorry if this has already been posted... http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-law-brief/61107-former-rim-ceo-buys-50-million-in-rim-stock

More from the Journal... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203363504577187293030118950.html

http://seekingalpha.com/news-article/2141388-the-st-joe-company-adopts-new-real-estate-investment-strategy

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/915191/000119312512025998/d290706dsc13g.htm?source=email_rt_mc&ifp=0

http://www.scribd.com/doc/79457162/GoodHaven-Fund-Annual-Report-November-2011

Not to sound like a broken record but... http://www.cnbc.com/id/45688879 Eddie and Ron Johnson oughta give Alex a call... ;)

And for good measure... Citi CEO Vikram Pandit from today: http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000069428