Fairfax Stock - New All Time High

[SafetyinNumbers]

8 hours ago, Parsad said:

 

I stick to North American stocks, and in my circle, I'm having a very hard time finding stuff.  But we go through these periods and then either markets correct or a sector corrects and opportunity appears.  I'm a solid 50% cash in most accounts.  My trading accounts are at 65% cash. 

 

While US t-bill rates have somewhat held until recently, Canadian t-bill rates started falling a couple of months ago.  I did buy a bunch of Canadian high-dividend REITS a few months ago, which have done well and continue to pay fat dividends.  But I'm sitting on a large amount of cash and will wait to deploy when something strikes me as cheap.

 

But I've been doing this for 25 years now and it works really well!  Cash doesn't burn a hole in my pocket and I've managed to smooth out the bumps that don't let other people sleep well at night.  Cheers!

I’m literally borrowing money, I’m finding so many bargains.

 

Did you ever buy E-L Financial? I think I mentioned it to you a few years ago. Still a 40%+ discount to stated NAV and likely over 50% on liquidation value.

[Munger_Disciple]

3 hours ago, Dinar said:

Parsad, you should do the work on Arcosa and New England Realty.  Both are insanely cheap.

 

What's your thesis on New England Realty?

[Junior R]

1 hour ago, SafetyinNumbers said:

I’m literally borrowing money, I’m finding so many bargains.

 

Did you ever buy E-L Financial? I think I mentioned it to you a few years ago. Still a 40%+ discount to stated NAV and likely over 50% on liquidation value.

@SafetyinNumbers can you please let us know the bargain stocks? I am also having trouble at the moment finding cheap stuff lol

[SafetyinNumbers]

2 minutes ago, Junior R said:

@SafetyinNumbers can you please let us know the bargain stocks? I am also having trouble at the moment finding cheap stuff lol

It’s generally stocks that won’t pass most investors screens because there is risk on execution but the return profiles look very compelling. I tweet about them and some of the other things I own @Brownmarubozu. 
 

I don’t want to pester the group with ideas they will never consider.

[benchmark]

10 hours ago, Parsad said:

 

I stick to North American stocks, and in my circle, I'm having a very hard time finding stuff.  But we go through these periods and then either markets correct or a sector corrects and opportunity appears.  I'm a solid 50% cash in most accounts.  My trading accounts are at 65% cash. 

 

While US t-bill rates have somewhat held until recently, Canadian t-bill rates started falling a couple of months ago.  I did buy a bunch of Canadian high-dividend REITS a few months ago, which have done well and continue to pay fat dividends.  But I'm sitting on a large amount of cash and will wait to deploy when something strikes me as cheap.

 

But I've been doing this for 25 years now and it works really well!  Cash doesn't burn a hole in my pocket and I've managed to smooth out the bumps that don't let other people sleep well at night.  Cheers!

Have you sold out on Meta? 

[Parsad]

24 minutes ago, benchmark said:

Have you sold out on Meta? 

 

Yes, I only have Meta in my personal holding company account and taxable account.  I don't trade really at all in either.  I still have all of my Fairfax in those two accounts.  I have a huge amount of capital gains in both and I'm better off letting them run, rather than paying tax and finding something else. 

 

I think both can continue to grow at 15%, so why sell, pay a huge amount of tax, only to find something compounding at 20%?  I'm also at the stage where I don't need to shoot the lights out anymore...even if I only did 8%, I would be very comfortable for the rest of my life.

 

Cheers!

[Dinar]

5 hours ago, Parsad said:

 

Arcosa is not cheap by any means.  With New England Realty, I have a bunch of REITS that have solid, consistent earnings, so it would just overlap what I already have in real estate.  Thanks for the ideas though!  Cheers!

Why do you think so?  Their barge business and wind tower business are inflecting in profitability.  I think that the barge business average over the cycle profits (EBIT) will be $120MM+ higher than what is being reported today.  CEO bought a million worth of stock $82 and another director bought 6,000 shares at $87 a few weeks ago. 

[Dinar]

3 hours ago, Munger_Disciple said:

 

What's your thesis on New England Realty?

60% below replacement cost, 10% cap rate, 4%+ distribution yield that should grow at around 8-10% per annum. 

[Munger_Disciple]

2 minutes ago, Dinar said:

60% below replacement cost, 10% cap rate, 4%+ distribution yield that should grow at around 8-10% per annum. 

Sounds cheap but why is the distribution low? Is it because they are reinvesting in new properties?

[Dinar]

39 minutes ago, Munger_Disciple said:

Sounds cheap but why is the distribution low? Is it because they are reinvesting in new properties?

They also buy back roughly 1% of s/o per annum.  Distributions have grown at 9% per annum over the past 15 years.  They are very financially conservative

[backtothebeach]

16 minutes ago, Dinar said:

They also buy back roughly 1% of s/o per annum.  Distributions have grown at 9% per annum over the past 15 years.  They are very financially conservative

how about opening a separate thread for this company?

[Dinar]

1 hour ago, backtothebeach said:

how about opening a separate thread for this company?

There is one. 

[Munger_Disciple]

2 hours ago, Dinar said:

They also buy back roughly 1% of s/o per annum.  Distributions have grown at 9% per annum over the past 15 years.  They are very financially conservative

 

Ok, thanks

[Parsad]

1 hour ago, TB said:

@Parsad - if you don't mind sharing - do you live off dividends or trading income? Also any insights on when Prem is retiring?

 

I have other income, so I don't need to live off the dividends or trading income presently.  But if I choose to retire tomorrow, I could live off the dividends/interest income.  Any trading income is just icing on the cake! 

 

Prem will not retire.  Like Buffett he will likely work till the day he dies.  He loves what he does, and he can continue to compound it at a high rate.

 

Cheers!

[Thrifty3000]

On 10/3/2024 at 5:44 PM, SafetyinNumbers said:

@mananainvesting asks a great question for the board.
 

How do you decide when to trim or sell all of your Fairfax position. All of the inputs you may consider are interesting to me.

 

My plan is not to sell any until I forecast forward ROE below 10%. I think it will be very hard to do that. 

In simplest “best practice” terms:

 

1) estimate intrinsic value

2) create a trade trigger to buy at a 40% discount to your estimate

3) create a trade trigger to sell at a 40% premium to your estimate

4) regularly update your intrinsic value estimate and your trade triggers (quarterly)

5) sit on your hands

 

^ this takes emotion and impulse transactions out of the equation

Edited October 5 by Thrifty3000

[dartmonkey]

On 9/30/2024 at 3:52 PM, Xerxes said:

Anyone knows if FFH has ever closed above $1700  ? I know it went above it as shown in the 52-week high but not closed. Correct ?

 

Hard to believe that, 6 weeks later, we are at $1946 CAD and $1394 US, an hour before close, touching all time highs intraday for both of them and heading for all time high closes. Not to mention that the thread was started in December 2 years ago, by viking, who said:

 

"Christmas has come early. Fairfax’s stock price has hit a new all time high today in Canadian dollar terms of $791.93 (markets haven’t closed)."

[Hoodlum]

20 minutes ago, dartmonkey said:

 

Hard to believe that, 6 weeks later, we are at $1946 CAD and $1394 US, an hour before close, touching all time highs intraday for both of them and heading for all time high closes. Not to mention that the thread was started in December 2 years ago, by viking, who said:

 

"Christmas has come early. Fairfax’s stock price has hit a new all time high today in Canadian dollar terms of $791.93 (markets haven’t closed)."

 

Volume buying started picking up this afternoon.

[Luke]

51 minutes ago, dartmonkey said:

 

Hard to believe that, 6 weeks later, we are at $1946 CAD and $1394 US, an hour before close, touching all time highs intraday for both of them and heading for all time high closes. Not to mention that the thread was started in December 2 years ago, by viking, who said:

 

"Christmas has come early. Fairfax’s stock price has hit a new all time high today in Canadian dollar terms of $791.93 (markets haven’t closed)."

When Muddy came in, didn't it fall to 1200 CAD for a short period? I saw many guys here loading up back then...great return on those shares so far...

[dartmonkey]

56 minutes ago, Luke said:

When Muddy came in, didn't it fall to 1200 CAD for a short period? I saw many guys here loading up back then...great return on those shares so far...

Yes - in USD, they got as low as $909, or C$1213. The Muddy Waters  exposé was published on Feb 8 and that's when the USD price dropped form the previous day's close at C$1404 to $1213 intraday Feb 8, before the opportunists among us bought enough shares to stop the drop. Then it recovered all its losses by a week later as the market read this board and realized we weren't at all impressed, with the company itself calmly and effectively refuting all the accusations the week afterwards.

 

Even the Feb 8 low was just rolling back the 5 weeks of gains since the end of 2023 (C$1222.51, or C$1202.96 if you adjust for the US$15 dividend.) 

[dartmonkey]

It's a good sign when an all-time high close on both US and Canadian exchanges ($1414.98 and C$1986.30, respectively) hardly merits mentioning.

 

The previous high for FRFHF, $1414, was a week ago (not mentioned here), and the previous highs for FFH were all three of the last 3 days; today's was the 4th day in a row, and there have been new highs 6 of the last 7 trading days. No doubt helped along by the collapse of the Canadian dollar.

 

Maybe the market is expecting an announcement in a week, about inclusion in the S&P TSX 60?

[KFRCanuk]

5 minutes ago, dartmonkey said:

It's a good sign when an all-time high close on both US and Canadian exchanges ($1414.98 and C$1986.30, respectively) hardly merits mentioning.

 

The previous high for FRFHF, $1414, was a week ago (not mentioned here), and the previous highs for FFH were all three of the last 3 days; today's was the 4th day in a row, and there have been new highs 6 of the last 7 trading days. No doubt helped along by the collapse of the Canadian dollar.

 

Maybe the market is expecting an announcement in a week, about inclusion in the S&P TSX 60?

 

$1986 you say? It's fun to read the 1986 Letter to Shareholders https://www.fairfax.ca/wp-content/uploads/1986-Letter.pdf

[Hoodlum]

I just noticed that 263k shares traded at the close on Friday.  I don’t believe that Indexers can add yet, so I wonder who is buying/selling while we wait for the TSX-60 add.  
 

We may see more of this next week, leading up to the possible announcement late on Friday. 
 

Edited December 1 by Hoodlum

[Masterofnone]

It is logical that traders might buy looking to sell into demand should there be an add. I would guess that much of the volume for the past several weeks involves jockeying around the calculated odds long and short. I would expect this happens any time indices  are scheduled to add or remove components. When Berkshire, with its low trading float got added to the S&P there was speculation and calculation that there would be a significant price jump. The actual rise was a few percent, tempered by these sort of arbitrage trades. The actual required fulfillment of demand of indexers has been taking place by proxy, resulting in the rise in price over the past weeks.

Edited December 1 by Masterofnone

[MMM20]

2 hours ago, Masterofnone said:

The actual required fulfillment of demand of indexers has been taking place by proxy, resulting in the rise in price over the past weeks.

Isn’t the normal volume in Fairfax nowadays much lower than Berkshire’s was at that time? I wonder if you’re mostly right but there’s still a bigger move coming closer to the date, similar to TPL ahead of its addition to the S&P 500 recently. But I won’t be surprised either way. 
 

Edited December 2 by MMM20

[Masterofnone]

1 hour ago, MMM20 said:

Isn’t the normal volume in Fairfax nowadays much lower than Berkshire’s was at that time? I wonder if you’re mostly right but there’s still a bigger move coming closer to the date, similar to TPL ahead of its addition to the S&P 500 recently. But I won’t be surprised either way. 
 

Smaller company and smaller index.