Liberty

Not after I looked at the components of that organic growth.

Yes, Leonard said 10-12%. Phaceliacapital said 5-10%. That's a pretty big difference. And Leonard didn't say over what period; it's different if he's thinking offer the next 10 or 20 years than if he's looking at the next 2-3 (but he tends to be a long-term guy). I think Leonard is one of the rare remaining practitioners of the art of under-promising and over-delivering, like how Buffett was writing back in the early 80s, when Berkshire was single-billions, that its scale meant we couldn't expect too much going forward. He was right that past history wasn't repeatable, but the results were still quite satisfactory. I seem to remember Leonard writing similar things a few years ago and the results since have been solid (especially if you take out FX headwinds that aren't under their control, -6% last year). Personally, I think CSU can probably do 15%+ for a while with very low risk, and that's fine for me. Some years it might do less than that, and others we might wake up to them having bought another TSS or something even bigger, or them deploying their whole pile of cash in a downturn (and more with more debentures now that they've found a kind of long-term debt that they're comfortable with? It didn't help them in the past that they were competing with levered PE when they eschewed debt).

What makes you think they can't grow faster than 5-10%? How much capital do you think they could deploy in a downturn and/or if their PE competitors didn't have access to so much cheap debt giving them the ability to put 7 turns on everything? I think one of the cool things about this business is that it's kind of counter-cyclical in value creation (you might almost say antifragile, but I don't deadlift enough to use that term). As for the letters, you should probably download them manually, they're all easy to find on the site. Note that in the early years he also wrote a short quarterly letter.

Mathematically, this isn't correct. You need to make more from your investments than you would working AND putting your money into index funds. This isn't quite correct either, because you don't necessarily need all the money you make while working to live. Hopefully you make a big surplus, which is what allowed you to save up and invest in the first place.

Thank you netnet!

Stock down 42% at the open. Ouch.

When secured short term borrowing is costing you between 15% and 22.5% a year and your business is about confidence and making a spread between what you borrow and what you lend, you're done.

It's probably normal if you're lending to someone desperate enough... The mafia probably does that kind of stuff. The math is even worse than it looks at first glance:

Home Capital not having a good time: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/hcg-to-home-capital-group/msg296793/#msg296793

This is probably not a good sign: http://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/home-capital-announces-non-binding-agreement-in-principle-with-major-institutional-investor-for-credit-line-of-2-billion-620463103.html Chaser: Also:

And here come the robots: Also a new shot of the Model 3 release candidate:

That's the one I was thinking of, thanks Aurelius:

Ha! It's all worthless to anyone but me. But I like it. I tag everything by ticker so I can do a search and find everything I have on a certain company, I highlight key passages so that it's easy to skim and see what each part is about, etc. I like the ability to go back and see what I was really thinking at the time to study past mistakes or missed opportunities, etc. It's digital. Basically just an encrypted Pages document that syncs to all my devices via iCloud, reverse chronological, with today's stuff on top tagged with the date, each part separated by dashes. Very simple.

Yes! That's why earlier in this thread I mentioned that I don't think "retirement" is quite the right word, because it conjures up images of playing golf and sitting around relaxing all day. I'm pretty sure that I "work" as hard or more than most people who have jobs. I have this investment journal that I've been keeping for a few years, and just YTD I have 105k words in it (not all mine, some excerpts from things I read - notes on conference calls, 10Ks, interviews, etc), and last year I ended the year with 254k words in my journal. So I basically have a novel's worth of highlights each year just for investing, and I read a lot more things than what I decide it worth keeping. But there's still a huge difference doing something that you've chosen because you want to and doing something that you like, but that is for someone else and that they have ultimate control over. If I decided investing wasn't what I wanted to do, I could put everything in index funds or with a manager I trust and then do something else with my time.

The problem with investing in CSU is: we have no clue how well the underlying businesses are working. The only way is to trust the management. What do you mean "no clue"? You have the aggregate numbers, that's how they're doing. That's different from knowing the operating details of each business unit, but there's over 200 and most aren't material by themselves, so not exactly realistic to break them out... What do you suggest? Imagine a company with lots of small profit centers doing their things, dealing with their customers, running their programs... Like at a big bank. They can't break out how each branch, each trading desk, each broker group and asset manager and derivative trader and research-publishing desk and bond trader desk and insurance group is doing this year or quarter. You get aggregate numbers that lump dozens or hundreds of things together, maybe in large divisions, and it feels natural because "it's the same business". But in a way that's not less arbitrary. CSU also breaks things up in a few operating groups and divisions, but all this stuff is the same company, I'm not sure what else they're supposed to do. More disclosure is usually better, but I feel they're pretty excellent compared to many of the other similar businesses I've looked at. Maybe I misunderstand your issue with the situation.

President's letter is out: http://www.csisoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2017-Presidents-Letter.pdf

Best not to over-react. Oaken has been raising rates during this crisis. Most likely explanation is that Ratehub was simply updating with the rates. Oaken is back on Ratehub now. In the current fluid environment, I thought it was material that they were gone. Obviously it's also material that they are back, so thanks for posting. I think it probably says something that they have to offer much higher rates than others. Time will tell, I suppose. http://i.imgur.com/zv0Ws7I.png

Because it's working so well right now? ;) To me it's just a manifestation of the engineering and investing mindsets: Decide what you want to optimize for (personal happiness? figure out what causes personal happiness for you and then what would increase those things), then allocate your resources in the way that maximises it (how do you want to allocate your time and capital to achieve your goals). I think the world could use more people who try to be rational about these things, rather than just do whatever everybody else is doing and then expect better result than the average (which doesn't seem that great to me).

Agreed. I don't think retirement is probably the best word for this because of all the baggage that comes with it, but I don't really have a better one. Financial independence, maybe? It's not like most FI/"retired" people just lay around on the beach all day doing nothing... Highly motivated and active people stay highly motivated and active when they are independent, and less motivated people like your neighbours were probably not that great back when they had a job... What I do all day is still "work" in many ways, but it's really different in many others. Before, I used to work all day and then never feel like I had enough time for my own stuff. I worked maybe 40 hours a week, and then spent maybe 20 hours a week on investing, and then tried to read history books and see my friends somewhere in there, on top of spending enough time with my wife... and then we had a kid so even more investing and reading and friends stuff got axed. Only so many hours in the day. I never liked reading in school, because I "had to do it" and someone else picked the books. But now I read all the time whatever I want.To me this whole thing feels similar. Lots of things would be really fun to do as a project, but if it was a job, it'd be a lot less fun. Maybe it's the way I'm wired, I know I'm not typical.

Ah, hard to tell sometimes with text. Cheers! Update: All this got me ruminating on the topic, so here's one way to think about it for those who are interested: If certain conditions are met, like being healthy, then what we are, essentially, is our time. It's our most finite resource, and anything we want to do or learn or be necessitates the time for it. When we work we sell our time (and energy) to others. We're kind of selling our lives to them. It doesn't need to be terrible if you have a good job (I had what I considered to be a great job with lots of freedom), but that's still what it is. If most of what you do with your money is buy lots of stuff (fancy cars, fancy gadgets, fancy house, fancy furniture, expensive hobbies, etc), what you are in essence doing is trading your time (life-time, literally) for stuff. Just make sure that the trade is really worth it, and that there isn't another way to allocate your time that you'd prefer. By saving a lot and investing, what I essentially wanted to do was buy back my own time, purchase my freedom. I could've driven a fancier car and lived in a bigger house or whatever, but I don't think it would've made much of a dent on my happiness level (the acquisition of stuff usually makes you happier when you anticipate it, then you get it and there's a mini spike, and the you revert to your mean - that's why I often space out my fun purchases rather than do them all at once). In fact, it never felt at all like making sacrifices because I had a much better goal than a fancy car. Every dollar that goes in the kitty felt much better than a dollar spent on whatever crap that people spend tens of thousands of dollars on every year (I wish I knew). There are good books on what actually makes people happy vs what people think will make them happy. 'Stumbling on Happiness' by Dan Gilbert is one that I remember reading years ago, if the topic interests you. On the other hand, having my time to myself does have a big impact. I can spend more time with my kid, with my wife, I can read more books, listen to more music, spend my time working on my own projects (I like investing these days) rather than an employer's priorities. When I feel like taking a walk or going out I can, etc. So that was a trade worth making for me. Others will have different priorities, but they should carefully consider the options and tradeoffs rather than just follow in the path that everybody travels on of "spend nearly everything you make chasing some 'standard of living', saving 5-10%, work until you are old and gray, and then have a big vacation". Financial independence can even be a good way to work even harder than before - start a business, even - because when you are doing the things that interest you most, that's what tends to happen but it's way more fulfilling. Or even the very same job because a lot more fun - and less stressful - when you don't need it. Just my 2 cents. YMMV.

Did I misread or did you misread? Dying with 2x your principal isn't safe? Man, you must not drive or use stairs or invest in equities if that's your safety requirement... I never said anything about that. My wife likes her job and the structure of the office job life, so she works. But she's not worried about money, she can take months or years off at any time if she wants, or she can change jobs while taking her time and without stress. To her that's the level of freedom that makes her most happy. Personally, I'm more independent-minded, I like to be 100% in control of my time and my projects and I don't need as much social interactions, so I'm happy sitting here in my home office or in the backyard doing my stuff on my schedule. To each their own, that's my point. Having options. If I liked it more than the alternatives, I could go get a job tomorrow. Many people would like to retire or work less or change job, but they can't or won't because they imagine that they need $5m to be safe and they're spending everything they're earning because they think buying crap is what will make them happy, causing all kinds of stress because they have all those bills to pay and all those things to worry about on the great treadmill to retirement at 65 while keeping up with the Jones or whatever... Have you watched the video I linked above? Clearly this isn't about "not working", it's about freedom. I didn't pick the name Liberty for no reason. It's one of the things I value most.

Also looks like Ratehub.ca had stopped listing Oaken (HCG) GICs.

Just saw this tweet go by, thought it was apropos: (No, haven't verified the numbers yet, feel free to do so.)

Hindsight is 20/20. It could've gone the other way, so don't beat yourself up on a win because it could've been even better. Someone else is always getting richer faster than you are, as Munger would say...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-team-focuses-on-exploiting-driverless-technology-1493035203 Amazon Forms Team to Focus on Driverless Technology