I find one of the hardest things in investing is keeping tabs on the relative attractiveness of perennially 'pretty good' ideas (e.g. Fairfax vs. Berkshire).

I like Fairfax and own a bit, but I'm not sure it trades at a much cheaper valuation than Berkshire. I show it as around 1.4x book as against 1.55 or 1.6x for BRK. Not that long ago you could get it for just over book, and it was a real bargain. Markel -- which hasn't executed very well recently -- is in the same neighborhood, right around 1.4x. White Mountains (WTM) doesn't get much attention. I bought a chunk around .8/book in 2022 -- and I should have bought a lot more. It's still currently just a little over reported book value, and still in the process of transforming from a vanilla insurer to more of a "Berkshire-like" entity. The insurance brokers like Chubb, Kinsale, Brown and Brown are interesting as well: in some ways better businesses than reinsurance. The company I work for uses Brown and Brown, has done forever, and doesn't seem inclined to shop around. But I don't think any are cheap at the moment.

For those really looking to crawl out along the risk/reward curve, it might be worth keeping an eye on Fairfax India, which is publicly traded on the Toronto stock exchange and advised by Fairfax's India team (Fairbridge, whatever). They're trying to run the same playbook: use insurance float to make investments in publicly traded and non-public companies.

fairfaxindia.ca: Investors - Fairfax India

It's hard for me to value their holdings, but I apply a good-sized haircut on the basis that Indian markets look overvalued. Long-term, however, I hope they'll find some good opportunities. Watsa's team knows India pretty well. I own a dink.

Part of the appeal of HHH is the flywheel driving the increase in value of the assets, which become more valuable as some proportion are sold and developed. Assigning any reasonable per-acre price to the land holdings, it's undervalued on a sum-of-the-parts analysis. Assuming Ackman is successful in his bid for control, I intend to hold on and watch how it develops. Ingles markets is sort of a similar situation, with real estate holdings equivalent to something like half the company's market cap, carried on the books at a much lower valuation.