Parsad

I believe January 28th is the latest they can file - check out the link here: https://www.osc.gov.on.ca/en/Companies_filing-calendar_index.htm Correct. We plan on filing before that, but that is the official deadline. Thanks!

Hi Folks, Details for our annual dinner. Tickets will go fast, so please buy them now...I can always refund closer to the date if you decide not to attend, but I cannot provide a ticket if we are sold out! We had over 180 people attend last year and we will probably blow through 200 this year. To buy tickets, go to: www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca Scroll down half the page...Select the type of ticket you want, and click "Buy Now"! Please review the details below for the dinner. Cheers! 11th Annual Fairfax Financial Shareholder’s Dinner CMC Fairfax Financial Shareholder’s Dinner Imperial Room - Main Lobby Level Wednesday, April 13th, 2016 Fairmont Royal York 100 Front Street West Toronto, Ontario (416) 368-2511 Presentation Only - $100.00 CDN Presentation & Expansive Full-Buffet Dinner - $200.00 CDN Cash Bar If anyone is interested in corporate sponsorship of prizes, or any donors for prizes, please contact me at cornerofberkshireandfairfax@gmail.com.

The magazine would do extremely well if he just catered to the same idiotic Wall Street crowd that he belongs to. Put scantily clad women back on there, and do articles about money, billionaires, private jets, cigars, high-end restaurants and fast cars. It's working for Trump, it should work for the lowest common denominator in value investing. Cheers!

Essentially, you are correct in the way you laid it out and the repercussions. If you are privy to non-public, MATERIAL information from a board meeting or as a director through any correspondence/discussion, then you cannot trade that stock even in the SMA account. At any other time, when not dealing with material information or a blackout period, then you can trade as usual, but would have to file on each trade as an insider. Yes, you only have power of attorney over each of those SMA accounts, but you are also in a privileged position and there is a conflict of interest as a director and investment manager. The restrictions of a director should supercede your abilities as an investment manager. Cheers!

Went for $72,600 USD this year! Wow! http://www.ebay.com/itm/Power-Lunch-Mohnish-Pabrai-/121786832318 Cheers!

Hey Folks, The two other auctions other than the Lunch w/Pabrai one are for a Conference Call w/Pabrai and a special Berkshire Hathaway rug. Both auctions expire November 13th: Conference Call: http://www.ebay.com/itm/121786892798?ssPageName=STRK:MESCX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1554.l2649 BRK Rug: http://www.ebay.com/itm/121786949355?ssPageName=STRK:MESCX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1554.l2649 Cheers!

At $11,300 US now! Auction expires tomorrow at 4pm. C'mon get yer bids in! Cheers!

LOL! Funny, but I think Kraven will probably stab you through your heart while you are sleeping tonight...and then go back to reading. Cheers!

LOL! +1. Cheers!

You can become a billionaire selling collateralized loan obligations that are worthless as well...it's been done as we all know. My point wasn't that you can't become rich from a short book or that people aren't willing to pay for it, just that the institutional money is stupid and thinks that they need to pay short managers to reduce volatility (not risk) from portfolios. It's modern portfolio theory and I cringe at that...just like I cringe every time I hear someone say the word "alpha"! Cheers!

Do people really buy groceries from Walmart? Go into your nearest Walmart and look at the groceries, really look at them, or even try to do your shopping there. Unless your local Walmart is VERY different from mine, what you will see is disgusting. The meats are gross and the produce is worse. I ran into a Walmart on the way home once to buy a case of Corona and some limes and walked out without any limes, because I wasn't even going to put those disgusting things in my beer and certainly wasn't going to serve them to guests. I had to drive out of my way to a grocery store. I know that they serve the lower income demographic, but that is just one of the many trends running against them as the world gets wealthier. Their products are sub-par (a generous understatement), their online service is terrible beyond compare, the employees!!... (it appears that they must hire people from local homeless shelters and/or insane asylums), the stores are not appealing or well kept, and their groceries (meats/produce) are inedible. Sure all this is all fixable, but will they fix it? No disrespect intended, but if 56% of their half trillion of sales are from selling groceries, then I'd say that people really do in fact buy their groceries from Wal Mart. Your description of the produce dept. is nothing like the Wal Mart nearest me. and regarding the world getting wealthier, I can't recall any period in history where there weren't far more poor people than wealthy people. I agree. The Walmart's in BC are very nice...no worse or better than Loblaws, Save-On-Foods or even Safeway. The meat department is perfectly fine, although most of the meat is prepackaged, so you aren't going to get a butcher to cut it some special way for you. It is clean and looks perfectly fine. Not sure what Walmarts look like elsewhere, but they are just fine around here. Granted, on a busy weekend, the stores can become unwieldy because of the sheer number of people shopping there, but that isn't any different than Superstore/Loblaws or Costco. They are just that busy! Cheers!

The "investing" word is definitely spin, but the truth is that by increasing wages at Walmart, they will reduce employee turnover. This is a huge problem at big-box stores, especially in their distribution warehouses. Loblaws actually has a bounty out in Canada that if you refer a warehouse distribution employee, they will pay depending on region, anywhere from $2,000-3,000 referral fee when that employee is hired. Big-box stores spend over $3,000-4,000 per floor/warehouse employee in training and recruitment costs, and roughly $8,000-10,000 on supervisor hires. But they have something like 35% turnover on floor/warehouse staff and 10-15% turnover on supervisory staff annually. Unfortunately or fortunately, another fact of reality is that big-box store employees are generally patrons of big-box stores because of the value received for their hard-earned dollars, and with increased wages will spend more of their income dollars at those stores, including Walmart. So increased wages mean increased expenses, but the actual cost won't be as onerous as markets perceive. Cheers!

I'd like to see that math. Making 20% a year it would take you 52 years to turn 100,000 into a billion. Making 8% a year it would take 121 year or so. Good luck! -you aren't including the returns from a long book. Very few hedge funds run with less than 100% gross (i.e. a short position does not crowd out a long position). So the rate of compounding would be much higher. build a spreadsheet. for any given time period, take the s&p, put in 100% long exposure and then add a 50% short book that makes 8% / year (you would obviously need to make it have some sort of negative correlation to the s&p to approach reality, but making 8% a year from shorting is certainly not anywhere close to recent reality so this is kind of a useless hypothetical). rebalance to 100% by 50% monthly quarterly, whatever. the compounding will be very high and it will have lower drawdowns and vol, the track record would be great. -you aren't including management fees and incentive fees, 8% / year from a decently diversified and scalable short book would make my fund incredibly attractive as a high return, high alpha strategy. If I couldn't raise money from institutions, I'd walk into Izzy Englander or Steve Cohen's office and be running a big book in no time. -you're starting value is too low ;D If you can make 8% a year shorting over the next 20 years, you'll be billionaire too. But it's not happening. That's really really really really hard. What was Einhorn's short book return from 2000 to 2015? That's not quite 20 years, but would you not say pretty close to 20 years. But Einhorn's already a billionaire, so he doesn't need 8% a year. When you build an investment portfolio, you shouldn't be thinking about 15 decent long positions and 6-7 decent short positions, so that you can avoid drawdowns while maximizing exposure in the porftolio. That along with the liberal use of the word "alpha" is modern portfolio bullshit! You should be looking for 8-10 of your absolutely best ideas...or less...and it shouldn't matter whether they are long or short. That being said, remember that the downside to shorting is unlimited, while the upside is limited. A great long position will always make you more money than a great short position. If your primary concern when running a fund is drawdowns, then you probably should not be running a fund. The primary concern should always be finding the best ideas you can and maximizing results for your partners with the least amount of permanent capital loss. Cheers!

Of Permanent Value: The Story of Warren Buffett/2015 Golden Anniversary Edition http://www.amazon.com/Permanent-Value-Warren-Buffett-Anniversary/dp/1578649870/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1446151758&sr=1-1&keywords=of+permanent+value Cheers!

Amazon is going to eat Walmart's lunch one day...12-15 years from now! So if you plan on holding Walmart for 20 years, you might be in trouble. Now, I don't know how many times I've said this before, but there is a big difference between the long-term viability of a business and whether it is a good short-term investment. In this case, without hesitation, only a fool would believe that Amazon is the better investment based on valuation, fundamentals, revenue, earnings, cash flow and net profit. I'm sure self-driving cars are going to significantly impact Geico's business one day, but is that going to make Geico unprofitable over the next 10-15 years? Probably not. Cheers!

Annual lunch auction with Mohnish has begun. 9 days left...at $2,025 US right now. Cheers! http://www.ebay.com/itm/Power-Lunch-Mohnish-Pabrai-/121786832318

A basket of shorts may decrease portfolio risk if they move opposite your long positions in a down market, but there is no guarantee any single short idea would...unless you are shorting an index ETF or similar. Shorting Fairfax during the financial crisis would have been very costly. My point goes back to paying someone like Chanos 1.5-2% a year to do what he does? How has that worked for the last five and a half years? The institutional imperative and modern portfolio theory drive people to do things like short...especially if they wrap their balls in ungodly amounts of leverage. Can you imagine what happens if that leverage begins to squeeze...thus stupid people, doing stupid things like shorting. Cheers!

That's true, but it's absolute portfolio returns that matter for wealth, not absolute returns on individual investment line items. And risk matters too (especially when you are levered up), and shorts tend to reduce certain market risks in an obvious way. Of course risk matters. Do you think shorting is without risk? You have limited upside with unlimited downside...how is an investment based on that mitigating risk in a portfolio? This is the BS that those that short like to use to argue risk management. There are a number of ways of managing risk without the limited upside and unlimited downside of shorting. Cheers!

Again, you can make that argument for Chanos, as he has made his living primarily as a short manager, but not for Einhorn. That being said, compare Chanos numbers for the last five years against the S&P 500 and you will see the stupidity in paying a hedge fund manager to protect you on the downside. Cash worked in 2007/2008 and cash would have killed Chanos over the last five years if you were worried about downside risk. Absolute returns over the long-run are all that matter if you plan on becoming wealthy! Ask Ericopoly! Cheers!

You should compare it against what a short position in the S&P500 would have done in the same period. Why? Last I checked, Einhorn reported his results based on absolute returns...an 8% return is an 8% return. Cheers!

This has been obvious for a long time now. I wasn't so sure. He's done a great job with his restaurant businesses, all things considered, but I think that a different skillset is probably required here. So I think he's probably a good businessman, but not necessarily a good leader. No, he's not a good CEO or leader of people, and the restaurants were doing best when he had better people around him. The restaurant business in the last couple of years has been neglected, as he over-leveraged it and was focused on CBRL and other endeavours...such as getting control and voting rights. Cheers!

I always looked at Maxim as an option on top of everything else BH had. Mostly disappointed that Sardar seems to be spending so much time on it. Put someone who knows what they are doing in charge and check in after a few years. Frankly, I couldn't care less what happens at BH, but I do find these types of casual remarks all too humorous. How many on here actually realize how difficult it is to run a business, let alone turn a business around? It's as though people expect a miracle turnaround to occur in a few months or a year...many turnarounds may take years...most never ever happen! Cheers! If I didn't know any better, that would have sounded like Sanjeev defending Biglari! :) No, that would never happen! :) But I call a spade, a spade. That's a very tough business in a very tough market...he's going to need more time and more money, and it still may not work out in the end. As an investor, I understand much better now about what happens during a turnaround and what is involved...and that makes me 10 times better as a CEO. As Buffett says, he became a much better investor when he became a businessman, and a much better businessman when he became an investor. Cheers!

I always looked at Maxim as an option on top of everything else BH had. Mostly disappointed that Sardar seems to be spending so much time on it. Put someone who knows what they are doing in charge and check in after a few years. Frankly, I couldn't care less what happens at BH, but I do find these types of casual remarks all too humorous. How many on here actually realize how difficult it is to run a business, let alone turn a business around? It's as though people expect a miracle turnaround to occur in a few months or a year...many turnarounds may take years...most never ever happen! Cheers!

Congratulations guys! I'm pleased that many of you are taking advantage of meeting with others in various cities and meet-ups. That's part of the reason this board was created...to allow people to network with like-minds. Cheers!

Walmart just needs to spin-off Sam's Club and sell off all other non-core assets. If they focus solely on the big box stores, smaller city stores and their online business, they will be just fine. Cheers!