The guy that runs this is named Prem Watsa and is nicknamed the “Warren Buffett of Canada” as he has made consistantely great investments since near the beginning of his career at in 1985. Even in the 1 year chart for Fairfax Financial Holdings, the company is up 50%+ year over year.
He has recently introduced (about a week or 2 old) a fund which is essentially a stock/etf/mutual fund of India named Fairfax India Holdings () . Basically this fund solely invests in India a market where the average salary is $4000 US a year (Rougly $330 a month ). The East Indian market has a lot of room to grow and could potential go nuclear (go huge fast) because of President Modi.
President Modi has offered a huge amount of reform and will most likely get his reforms done as he has a huge majority. He has awarded people roles in his government based on merit and not political connections.
The savings rate in India is only 33% which is not that high for a developing 2nd world economy as found here but it is still pretty high and a lot higher than 1st world countries at around 1 – 15%.
Now back to Fairfax India Holdings. Presently they released at $1 billion market cap and will be investing in private as well as public companies, so they will buy parts or all of a company or they will buy securities like stocks or bonds.
It is very hard to lose money in India at the moment other than if its Fraud on the part of a partner. If you take a look at Mutual Funds such as Birla Sun Life ’95 Fund and Birla Sun Life Tax Relief ’96 both have 25%+ yearly returns since there inception in 1995 and 1996. Which means you could have made 80 to 180 times your money since inception.
Right now there is not much information on Fairfax India Holdings as it is extremely new and sometimes companies dont release good documentation till the 1st quarter of operations is done but granted that its run by Prem Watsa the man who runs Fairfax Financial Holdings and was Chairman and CEO since its inception.
Prem Watsa does have a CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst designation) which is the hardest designation to get in the financial field as hard as getting a Ph.D in Finance and he is only 64 years old. Furthermore he is worth $1.3 billion as he owns 10% of Fairfax Financial Holdings a $13 billion dollar corporation.
You will note that Fairfax Financial Holdings bought Blackberry in 2013 for $4.7 billion dollars. We will have to see if they made good money on this deal in the coming years but a stock appreciation of 52% year over year is pretty good.
We will have to wait and see if Fairfax India Holdings can make substantial returns much like how Fairfax Financial Holdings has, I believe it will and am invested.
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