Fairfax Financial (FFH.TO)

(A Top Pick Dec 1/16. Up 10%.) He still likes this. There is a chance the insurance markets are going to improve with improved pricing after all the catastrophe losses last year. This is a great long-term investor, and if you take a long-term view it’s a company that will be able to compound Book Value at an above average rate. You should think of this as a 5-10 year investment.

Prem Watsa owns a lot of businesses in India, so if you want an indirect way to play India out of a very volatile ETF, this is a way to do it. They also run and Indian ETF. This is an insurance company, so there is a lot of hedging being done. The stock sometimes does better in a poorer market because of the hedges.

(A Top Pick Oct 31/17. Down 5%.) The stock was moving up, started to round over. This has India. Has insurance interests, which can be affected by the West Coast buyers. He’s at the point where he is trying to decide if this is a real breakdown or should he keep it. Watch this before buying if you are in new investor.

(A Top Pick Dec 28/16. Up 4.99%.) This has been a little bit all over the board. It would still be a Buy today, but as far as the insurance space goes, there are probably better names. With this one, you get potential for improvement in their insurance underwriting.

Prem Watsa's investing approach is often compared to Warren Buffett's. He believes that over the long-term, the stock price is going to reflect a company's ROE relative to the Price to Book that you are paying for. If you take a very long-term view of this company, it is a fairly safe place to invest. If there was any pullback, this would be a very, very good buy.

(A Top Pick Oct 31/17, Up 1%) It's been doing very well and thinks that the stock will get into the $750 range. He likes the diversification outside of Canada. It’s an undervalued stocks.

Just reported results yesterday and made a huge amount of money, almost $500 million. He likes Prem Watsa. Like everybody else, he is not perfect. Took his hedges off earlier this year. They are very diversified, not just in insurance, but are in India, Ireland, etc. Wouldn't say this was cheap by any metric. He owns the preferreds. Wouldn't be buying now.

Has been watching this for a very long time. He likes Prem Watsa and the company, but Prem was doing some goofy things with hedging, etc. and it showed in the stock price. He just bought this and thinks there is a lot more room to go. Prem has got back to the basics of investing, and he thinks this is going right back to the top of its trading range of around $750. (Analysts' price target is $699.16.)

(A Top Pick Aug 18/16. Down 5%.)He still loves this. Technically, it is just past some resistance and had a really good day today. Chart is showing a nice upward trend from the beginning of July. He also likes Prem Watsa's way of doing business. Still a BUY.

He admires management very much. It is interesting that they are getting a reasonable toe-hold in India. They seem to have a good knowledge of that area. They were negative on equity markets for some time, but Prem Watsa has finally come around that this market is going to run a little further. Hopes they get a little more aggressive. Expects you will see better results over the next 12 months.

Sell or Hold? This is very difficult to analyse. It’s like a black box and he doesn’t know what the earnings are going to be. There is the insurance side, but he doesn’t know exactly what the investments are all the time. For the first 7-8 years after the crash, because Prem Watsa owned all these Puts, it did really well in the crash, and he was able to grow BV on the insurance side and made gains on the portfolio, but you never knew where they where. Prem finally had a loss on the Puts but was overwhelmed by gains on the other stuff. He owns a lot of their bonds and preferreds. Because of their uncertainty, they always trade at a discount, so the yields are higher.

It is on his buy list. He likes that management has been switching out of more hedgy types of positioning and into traditional long approaches to the market. FFH-T has good exposure to India. He likes it.

This is essentially a bet on the acumen of Prem Watsa. Fairfax just bought Allied World for $4.9 billion, which gives them the brokerage market and the Fortune 1000 companies. The stock is off 15% because of his bet on it being deflationary where he lost $5 billion, but he made 5 billion on the other side in terms of his investments. Dividend yield of 2%. (Analysts’ price target is $553.13.)

Owns some of their preferred shares. Doesn’t think he would buy the common shares now. Has a huge insurance operation in many, many countries. He likes what they do. They made a major mistake during the recession, when they hedged on the basis of the market going to go down, but the market has done fantastic.

(A Top Pick June 30/16. Down 7%.) He still loves this name and thinks it will do quite well. Interest rates going up is really good for financials.