Liberty

+1

I think this was a better deal in most US states because the creditor of the mortgage can't go after you personally. The way I understand it, in Canada they can. Unless they spend all that HELOC money on intangibles, they'll get repossessed.

That's a good question. The way I'm playing my conviction is by being ready to continue renting for a few years. We'll try to be really patient because if (when) it happens, it could take a while to reach bottom line in the US, and it won't bounce back quickly, so no need to hurry up. Would suck to be right about this but buy way above the bottom... But as for shorting stocks, I'd look at companies that are heavily leveraged and closely tied to construction in Vancouver or Toronto. No idea what the best company to short would be, though.

Indeed, but you can sure make it easier or harder to do so. (ie. remove all seatbelts from all cars)

wow, cwericb. Thanks for sharing that. I see it all around me. People spend more time thinking about xmas gifts than about the house they're buying. They don't consider it an investment in real estate, just something they're entitled to do when they're old enough and have a "real job". Renting is universally considered to be a waste of money "because at the end you've got nothing". They don't realize that for most people the choice is between renting an apartment/house/condo or renting money from the bank (to buy a house/condo). People who would never borrow to invest in stocks are leveraged 10-to-1 or 20-to-1 on a potentially very illiquid asset. Owning a house is not seen as something you achieve (by saving a lot and then waiting for the right bargain), it's seen as something you have a right to (price doesn't matter, it'll go up anyways!). That's dangerous.

Makes you wonder about what they don't disclose...

Doesn't sound realistic to me. In a country where 30% of the economy is now real estate and 70% of people are home-"owners", with debt levels over 150% (a lot of it financed with HELOCS), will affordability measures and rent ratios all in extremely bubbly territory, lots of speculation and over-building, hot foreign money, loose lending standards and "cash-back" mortgages, baby boomers retiring with most of their savings locked up in their houses, interest rates at historic lows bound to go up eventually, etc, I don't see how CHMC is going to help. It may protect banks from a direct hit, but it won't protect the country's economy when this thing bursts, IMO. The only reason why things went as far is because - like in all bubbles - people have started to believe that prices doesn't matter because what they're buying is going to be worth more in the future anyways (I hear it all the time - this time it's different!). As soon as that's not true anymore, the spell is broken and we'll look like the USA. No other way to explain why crappy suburban shacks are now worth millions while salaries haven't kept up with inflation... The average person seems to think that real estate is totally different from bonds or stocks or gold or whatever. It isn't. Sure you are living in it and it's a lot less liquid (which is another problem when things go south), but aside from that, value and price are two different things. The more I learn, the farther away I would stay from a business's stock that had the characteristics of the Canadian real estate market. I sure am glad we're renting.

Been reading the archive.. On page 20 I found this overview of the main thesis: http://www.greaterfool.ca/2012/01/08/in-the-end/

[amazonsearch]The Great Depression: A Diary[/amazonsearch] I'm about 1/3 of the way through, but I find it fascinating. The diarist (is that a word?) is very interested in investing, so he notes a lot of things that should interest people here.

I thought I was the only one finding this. I stopped reading the Economist a few months ago. Could you guys elaborate with some specific examples? Are you sure that it's not your own positions that have changed over time?

I really like the economist. Not necessarily very "value", but high quality nonetheless.

+2

That Joe guy is so retarded that he almost ruins any part of the interview where he speaks up. Too bad.

Thanks!

Looking at the real estate bubble in Canada, I'm not sure I would invest in any bank right now. They might be spared some of the trouble because of CMHC insurance, but they would still get hit pretty hard in a correction afaik.

It's more a collection of excerpts arranged by topic.

Geoff Gannon: http://www.gurufocus.com/forum/read.php?1,164027,164027#msg-164027

Yep, a must-have reference, though the complete collection of shareholder letters is worth reading in full too.

I feel like he probably couldn't have mentioned the bad things that Sokol did specifically in the AR (not his style), and he didn't want to just mention the good without the bad because it would seem a bit surreal after how things ended. He's already mentioned quite often how good Sokol was for Berkshire, so he probably felt his best option was not to mention him at all.

I think it was from Dale Carnegie that he learned to criticize generally and praise specifically. This is kind of an extension of that, it seems.

Has anyone heard anything about Value Line creating a iPad/iPhone app? Not sure how tech-savvy they are, but it could solve a lot of user interface problems... Still, I'm tempted to go with the print version. You still get the online access with it, so nothing lost..

It's like xmas! ;D

I often hear this (in fact, it seems to be as far as anyone from banks or the government is willing to go in newspapers). Can you elaborate on what makes you think this "sideways" scenario is more likely than a bust? My understanding is that markets generally tend to overshoot both ways and rarely find some stable middle path, especially when there's leverage/government intervention/irrational beliefs among market participants/hot money pouring in/people think something is safer than it truly is/etc (I know this describes almost everything everywhere, but that's my point -- this isn't different). With everybody in debt to their ears, interest rates at historic lows and random economic shocks bound to hit the Canadian economy at some point or other, I kind of have trouble seeing how this would just result in prices stabilizing rather than in a panic-bust like we've seen in so many other places in the past. I used to kind of accept the "generally accepted wisdom" that seems to be repeated everywhere on how Canada doesn't have the subprime/bad lending standards that the US had, which is why we'll be ok. But after reading this, I'm not so sure: http://www.greaterfool.ca/2012/02/20/canadian-subprime/

Hey, I've recently discovered Garth Turner's blog. I'm probably the last one here to find it, but just in case... http://www.greaterfool.ca/ I thought it might interest those who want to hear the case for the "big real estate bubble about to burst in canada". If you read his past 4-5 posts you should have a good idea of what his arguments are. He can be a bit over the top, but in general, I find the thesis pretty convincing. It's just impossible to know how long it'll take before there's a day of reckoning (but I'd be surprised if it took longer than 2-3 years)...

So I'm more and more tempted to subscribe to Value Line Small Caps, but I'm hesitating between the paper and just the online version (which is cheaper). I like having the paper to leaf through, but I was thinking that with the new iPad 3 coming out soon (almost assuredly with a super-high-res screen), maybe I could just get the online subscription and use the iPad. So here's what I'm curious about: -Is the 'online' subscription a bunch of PDFs you can download? Is it HTML on the site? -How does it work when you want to go to the page for company #5674? Is there a clickable index in the PDFs or whatever? Do you have to flip pages all the way to page #5674? Any other pros or cons of the online version that you've noticed? Any reason why paper is an absolute must? Thanks!