rijk

does anybody have a pdf copy available to share? regards rijk

below is a table that shows bond maturity > 5 years (compiled from annual reports) two observations: - even though mkl seems to agree with buffett on interest trends, their bond portfolio is positioned much more in line with ffh than brk - brk's relative risk exposure to higher interest rates is far lower than ffh and mkl's > 5 yrs---2011---2010---2009---2008 FFH-------74%---83%----74%---71% MKL-------71%---72%----71%---72% BRK-------24%---24%----29%---27% regards rijk

one of the most wanted documents in value investing.... regards rijk http://www.scribd.com/doc/82691653/Shareholder-Letter?secret_password=1q28trc8tng8la6msun2

"By the way, did you notice that their next CEO has been tapped ( with two backups ). He ( or she if it's J. ) is described as being well known to all members of the BOD. I've got my idea about who it is. What's yours?" bill gates regards rijk

my vote is also for BRK regards rijk

biaggio, sorry, corrected the obvious typo..... per below, rodriguez is clearly in the inflation camp, so, while both have similar cautious economic outlooks, rodriguez expects inflation, while watsa expects (at least temporarily) deflation..... "Do you expect inflation or deflation next year? Rodriguez: Right now, we have deflation and inflation simultaneously: deflation in home prices and inflation in commodity prices. If we do not address our fiscal issues within no longer than three years, you could see long-term monetary inflation taking hold. Congress has been irresponsible." http://www.advisorone.com/2011/11/23/research-roundtable-gundlach-rodriguez-others?page=3 regards rijk

sobering but excellent and very relevant article http://advisorperspectives.com/commentaries/fpa_021812.php?WT.rss_f=CommentaRSS&WT.rss_ev=a&WT.rss_a=Danger:_Caution_Ahead rodriguez and watsa seem to be on the same page when it comes to economic/financial outlook, however, the difference in bond maturity profiles is striking: rodriguez currently maintains a near record low portfolio duration of 0.8 years while fairfax currently holds approx 75% of their bond portfolio > 5 years regards rijk

http://www.morningstar.com/earnings/35506966-fairfax-financial-holdings-ltd-q4-2011.aspx regards rijk

fairfax's significant $12 billion bond holdings, of which 75% has a maturity > 5 years, seems to go totally against buffett's recent warning to stay away from bonds ("Bonds promoted as offering risk-free returns are now priced to deliver return-free risk.") what would be the implications for fairfax if buffett is right, i.e. how much wiggle room do they have to "adjust" their bond positions if things slowly develop in line with the buffett scenario? regards rijk

"Should we have not done it? Absolutely. Should he be sharing a cell with Raj Rajaratnam? Not based on the current facts. This wasn't a scheme to create an insider trade in my view." i assume that "we" is a typo..... fine, maybe all intentions were good, even though it's hard to figure out how someone like einhorn could claim innocence or ignorance in my mind, it's not so much what happened but more the reaction, if this was an "honest mistake", why make up all the childish excuses a la sokol, why not admit making a mistake or an error? regards rijk

"Einhorn has zero excuses for what happened. This is a guy who tears apart CEO's of other corporations because of something they did that was slightly out of whack...never mind actually fraudulent or fined by a securities commission. There is no underlying context or explanation for what happened to him. He received non-public information on which he traded...the end! Cheers! " well spoken sanjeev!!!! it's a bit scary how many individuals on this board kind of try to explain/justify what happened..... regards rijk

+12%, about half coming from special situations & luckily sold SD & LUK timely.... regards rijk

anybody considering selling puts? jan 2012 put strike 35 @ 3.50 looks interesting mar 2012 put strike 30 @ 4.30 also looks interesting regards rijk

best wishes to all and a very healthy and hopefully wealthy 2012!!! regards rijk

Is anyone a subscriber to Gurufocus? They seem to also have lots of info and screens and such. I'm only a free user, but I'm wonder if maybe they cover a lot of the same data as VL, maybe at a cheaper price. (no paper version, though) i use gurufocus, it's great, especially the 10 year financial data, which can be downloaded to excel, attached is an example for MMM 10 year valuations and history on guru holdings are usefull regards rijk 2011-12-7-10-13.xls

this article is plain wrong...... fairfax paid €0.10 per BKIR.L share, which is trading at €0.09 today, so 10% discount to fairfax's cost basis this price corresponds to 30% of bv...... the adrs were highly inflated at the time fairfax invested.....

this smells funny.....

OSG is trading at multi decade lows now.... http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=OSG+Interactive#symbol=OSG;range= heavy insider buying.... http://www.dataroma.com/m/ins/ins.php?t=y&fr=2010-11-29&to=2011-11-28&am=0&sym=OSG&o=fd&d=d is there anyway to get comfortable with liquidity/solvency, in other words, can they survive the cycle?

great!!! thanks for sharing.... regards rijk

up approx. 10%, bought brk and ffh during downturn, still keeping very high cash levels regards rijk

hwic, who has grown book value and share price by 20+% for 25 years, is accepting a 2.85% yield and does not cash in on significant unrealized gains on treasury bonds while interest rates are at all time lows........ what should this tell us???? regards rijk We continue to be very concerned about the prospects of the financial markets and the economies of North America and Western Europe, with the possibility -- with the possibilities of developing problems in China. Our annualized portfolio yield decreased in the third quarter of 2011. The yield, on an annualized basis, was 2.85%. That compares to the third quarter of 2010 yield, which was 3.45%. The decrease in the yield reflected the increased investment expenses associated with the total return swaps. The average investment portfolio size has increased to $24.9 billion from $23.2 billion last year. And we had the opportunity -- these are very liquid treasury bonds, longer-term treasury bonds we can sell at a moment's notice; we decided not to. And it's reflecting the fact that we're still very concerned about the economic outlook The markets go up and down. We're looking through all of that -- looking at the long term, and there'll be a point when we'll realize these gains, but we don't think it's today.

a little gimmick to protect french banks who sold cds protection, imagine you purchased these cds instruments...... looks like there could be some lawsuits.... regards rijk

i have little doubt that the hedge piece of the strategy will work fine... the trickier piece will be to recover the insurance costs by selling weekly puts, which i think is more difficult to simulate in a spreadsheet tax implications and trading costs are good observations.... as the author mentions in the articles, you can fine/tune this strategy endlessly, making it high maintenance/time consuming, however, the strategy itself doesn't need that much attention/maintenance, once the annual short/call or put is in place, you only need to repeat one transaction, selling the weekly puts, once a week, this shouldn't take more than 15 mins/week regards rijk

please read the articles, the interesting part about this strategy is that insurance costs are offset with premiums earned from selling covered puts on a weekly basis..... not really interested in gold..... regards rijk

paying for the otherwise excessive option insurance costs by over-insuring and selling short term puts against long term calls (or puts) seems like an interesting idea -does anyone use this strategy? what are your experiences? -the viability of this strategy is based on the premise that option pricing places more value on something that is close than way in the future, if this is a fire-proof strategy, then why not forget about long equity investing and make long/short (maturity) option trading your main activity? regards rijk http://seekingalpha.com/article/294438-hedging-with-options-using-spy-as-an-example