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The fact is time is the friend of the great businesses and when the business is weak, it's usually the reputation of the management that get hurt. Regarding Lampert, when things got clear that it was not about building a holding company like BRK (and benefit from it's investment acumen) but a retailer turnaround situation only, I did get out quickly. It's very tough to turnaround a retailer, especially a big one like that. Lampert was open minded to try different things and look for the results, but so far it has not worked very much. I do not want to say that there is anything to do and Sears is a mess, but it's a tough job.

Because Wall Street is short term oriented.

Even if you buy LUK at a good price, in the end, what you buy is trust in people that manage it. You have to do it in every business that you buy, but especially with LUK. You have to trust that they made a good decision with that transaction. But that trust is far from being blind: they have a long track record of both stewardship and talent and I don't see why they would want to scrap their decades of work to build their masterpiece with that transaction. But again, in the end, buying LUK is a matter of trust.

Oh well, we are far than few years ago, when we did get many posts just 30 minutes or so after each quarter release. FFH is a boring company now ;) Who would have tought a decade ago? Remember Peter Eavis and it's FFH cash crunch? Underwriting is improving. Our hedges continue to be costly, but such is life. Keep the long term view. Cheers!

They bought back a bunch of peanuts over the last months, but that's fine with me. Balance sheet always come first and we already get a dividend. I will not get into that dividend vs buyback debate once again ;) Cheers!

You can also read the Berkshire Hathaway chairman letters for free. With all due respect to Graham, I think that Buffett is better at explaining the concepts that Graham teached. Complicating life is easy. The genius is in the simple things. Ivory soap Once you know them, you have a given circle of competences (and a well defined of circle of incompetences in order to not fool yourself), and know accounting enough, it has more to do with your behaviors than your knowledge. Here is a list of behaviors that seem important to me: - independant mind. Not being a contrarian or follow the crowd person. The crowd can be right. The crowd can be wrong. Act on your own judgement without being arrogant. - stress control. Your stomach shouldn't dictate you how to act. Easy said, but few actually had the gut to invest in the biggest stock market crashes. Same thing for individual stocks. When they go down significantly and the intrinsic value is intact, let the maths chose, not your stomach. - selectiveness: you have a house, a family, a car...why do you need to put your cash in 50 different stocks? Look for the fat pitches. - patience: sit quietly in a room and wait. Also, why should you care that much about daily fluctuations? Will you sell all your stocks at the end of the day? - risk taking capacity. Margin of safety. Prudent financial leverage. - learn from your experiences...and those of the others! If you don't learn from your mistakes because you think it's not your fault, it will "not be your fault" neither next time... - etc. etc. etc. Cheers!

Good news indeed! It's great to see that some of the most wealthy people on earth not only giving more and more of their fortune to charity, but also join their efforts to be more efficient with that charity money too!

Quite frankly I don't know my YTD rate of return and I don't care. Overall, the underlying businesses are doing well, the stock prices still provide a decent margin of safety...and that's what important to me. Take care of the bottom line and the stock price will follow. I've been a partial owner of all the businesses in it since 4 to 9 years!

I don't see why we should be happy that much with this news. Yes, the judge recognize that Fairfax suffered a loss, but dismissed the complain against a lot of defendants and suffering a loss is far from enough to win a case. That being said, if we ultimately win and the defendent is solvant, the judge has already recognized the damage being done to Fairfax. Cheers!

Because "'All man's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone." - Pascal.

If you see big inflation, the CPI contract is not a major concern because it's cost is fixed, so the downside is limited. But, it's another story for the fixed income portfolio. We are hedged against a deflation scenario, but not for a high inflation one. It's like the Noa story. We have a boat in case it rains...but if it's shiny and hot, we'll be thirsty. Cheers!

Basicaly a flat quarter, wich is somewhat unusual ;)

Suffice to say that I will not cry if he's found guilty.

The answer is no. These are different companies. I understand their respective long term track record, but while you can see similarities between both models, they are also different in several aspects. I could take a look at Bidvest Group and say that it is the next Berkshire, but again there is also some differences. Same with Leucadia and Markel. I guess that there will never be any "next Berkshire Hathaway", like there will never be any next McDonald, Madonna, Bill Gates, JFK...or whatever. Cheers!

Yes, our suit shrinks, but I'm still with this battle, even if it cost us a little. Even if we lost, the hedge funds and their puppets stopped to spread their vomit the day Fairfax filed the suit and we can now sell our toasters without being annoyed by these people.

Ross, you know that intrinsic value estimates are always...estimates! But personnaly I think that headlines earnings per share at 18x or so is a fair value for a solid, growing and diversified company like that. So 12 to 13 times heps is sufficient margin of safety to me. I give value, and ask less discounts to companies I might be able to keep a decade or more in a portfolio (if the price stay at decent levels). And one other thing to consider about Bidvest is that they've been able to grow their intrinsic value per share over the last decades at a stellar rate even if they gave a significant part of the cash they have generated to shareholders. Mr. B, I did get to know Bidvest when I red this study few years ago. It's a very good read! By the way, if somebody know about other conglomerates that are managed this way and have decent track records, please let me know. Cheers!

I've been a shareholder of this company since a few years and I'm happy. I'm surprised that this company is still not well known in the value investors community, because Brian Joffe is the best fundamental value investor that I know. It's track record is stellar! Bidvest is one of the closest thing with Berkshire Hathaway that I can think of, except it is smaller and doesn't invest a lot in stocks. - Buy good businesses. - Buy them at a good price. - Culture of decentralized operations. But they have invested internationaly at an earliest stage than Berkshire and they give shareholders a dividend. Already have businesses in South Africa, Europe, Asia, etc. Nearly 50% of it's revenues come from abroad. Shareholder friendly and creative management. Brian Joffe, it's CEO, have been there since a long time and have created tremendous amount of long term value for it's shareholders. He's convervative when companies are too expensive, and opportunistic when they get cheap. I remember when the panic was there and Bidvest was quite cheap. Brian Joffe decided that instead of giving a dividend, he would buy back 2% or so of the stocks of all shareholders this time. Unfortunately, some were somewhat upset and Brian told us that he would not do that again. But that was a smart and fair move for long term shareholders. The only problem with Bidvest actually is it's price. I would wait for a better margin of safety before buying some. With these kind of one of a kind businesses, I use the Shelby Davis way and wait for having a 30% discount of intrinsic value before buying some shares. But it's a company that every one here should study. Cheers!

A bad year on the underwriting side (far from being the first one), a bad year on the hedge side, a good year (fortunately) on the bond side. Some of their stuff I like a lot (like good, big and cheap big companies), some of their stuff I wonder what they are doing there (like RIM), and the macro stuff that I can't predict. If the insurance business prices are getting interesting, it's a good thing to write more business, as long as you not fooling yourself with "catastrophes are not normal part of the business" kind of mindset. It's been some time since I've reviewed a lot of things in details with FFH, but overall, correct me if I'm wrong, but Fairfax will do very well if their deflation scenario happens, and will do bad if interest rates increase significantly. Regarding the stock price drop today, we're at about the same level as last october. Nothing to be excited or worried that much. Remember 2003? ...

Warren is not "losing it" a second. His rationale about taxes is clear and lucid. He has billions that he gives to charities and at this point, focus on lemonade stands things like a lot of us do is not going to move the needle. He put decades of brick after brick build reputation on the table for a cause that he deeply believes in. And the least that I we can say is that nobody can accuse him of tax policies lobbying for personal wealth interest!

RIM was some kind of a darling few years ago. Some even called it the next Microsoft of some kind. The fact is that I didn't know how to confidently say that it's competitive advantage was durable, so I've passed. Now we are few years later, and it's still in the "Too hard" pile to me. I would get anxious if the FFH position in it would get too high. I don't especialy like these 7 feet high turnaround situations, but Prem and co. did a good job with that overall since 1985. Cheers!

Hi Sanjeev, I remember what Fitch was doing to Fairfax in our lean years and how some of us were upset about them, so it's probably some anchoring but I can't get myself to give some credibility to Fitch. I know it's probably different people who rate these things, but...anyway, hey, I'm able to post again! Thank you very much for the help. Cheers!

That's a very good question to ask. I appreciate your curiosity and willingness. That being said, I unfortunately can't answer it. I can think of 5 to 10 baggers, but I do not wich one could grow that much with a fair level of confidence. Cheers!

Al, mediocre quarter?! Don't you remember the lean years? Come on, Al. ;) Well, Alzheimer's can't be all bad. You get to meet new people every day. 8)

RIP Mr. Jobs. It's innovative people like you that America needs to prosper over the long run.

It's a terrific interview with Prem. I was worry that it might goes too much about individual stocks in the FFH portfolio, but it didn't. It might be the best interview with Prem that I've seen so far. Cheers!