Title: Buying The Next Berkshire Hathaway — Fairfax Financial Holdings Show: Compounding Quality (Substack, paid post — compoundingquality.net) Guest: Pieter Slegers / Team Compounding Quality (author; byline "Compounding Quality") Date: 2026-08-16 URL: https://www.compoundingquality.net/p/buying-the-next-berkshire-hathaway Length: written post — no timestamps Note: Paid-subscriber post captured via Stephen's logged-in session. Body text verbatim; UI chrome removed. Images noted inline as [Image — ...]; the Interactive Brokers order screenshot and the Fairfax long-run performance chart are not transcribed as tables because every figure they carry is stated in the text. The order line reads "we enter an order in the market for Q 30" in the original — "Q" is a typo for quantity, i.e. 30 shares.
Hi friend
Today we are buying a new stock for Our Portfolio.
This company:
Outperformed Berkshire Hathaway by a wide margin since 1985
Is led by 'The Canadian Warren Buffett'
You get immediate exposure to the growing Indian market
Just like Berkshire Hathaway they use their float to invest in stocks
Management thinks they can grow by 15% per year (doubling every 5 years)
Fairfax Financial Holdings ($FFH)
How does Fairfax make money?
Fairfax makes money by selling insurance and reinsurance policies, collecting premiums from clients while carefully managing risks. It then invests the money it holds before paying claims (the "float") to earn additional returns.
Fairfax stands for Fair & Friendly acquisitions:
Fair: Fairfax generally offers reasonable prices and deals with sellers and shareholders in good faith.
Friendly: They like to work with management teams, not against them. You won't typically see Fairfax launching hostile takeovers.
Sounds good, right?
You can read the full investment case here: Full investment case Fairfax Financial
General Information: Fairfax Financial Holdings
Company name: Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited ISIN: CA3039011026 Ticker: FFH Type: Owner-Operator/Cannibal Stock Price: CA$2272 Market cap: CA$47.3B (roughly 34.6B in USD) Average daily volume: CA$122 million
Conclusion investment case
Prem Watsa took the lessons of four extremely talented investors/operators and applied them to Fairfax.
Warren Buffett: leverage insurance operations to generate cheap float to invest.
Ben Graham: think like a value investor.
Sir John Templeton: be contrarian and invest globally (Fairfax operates/invests in North America, Southeast Asia, Europe, Latin America, and even North Africa).
Henry Singleton: Sometimes, your best investment is simply your own business.
What Prem Watsa added himself?
Approach business as a force for good.
Always be as charitable as possible and live up to the motto: "Doing good by doing well".
This made Fairfax one of the best performing stocks in North America.
The stock returned 19.5% (!) per year since 1985:
[Image — Fairfax long-run share-price performance since 1985]
But now the million dollar question...
"Is the current Fairfax situation really like zipping back time 30 years and having the opportunity to buy a smaller Berkshire?"
We think it is.
The upside potential is still tremendous.
Via Fairfax, you get exposure to India which should allow Fairfax to double its intrinsic value every 5 years.
What sets Fairfax apart from the many Berkshire copycats is its exceptional track record.
Strong returns over a few years can be luck.
But outperforming the market for more than 40 years takes extraordinary skill.
Our transaction
We are buying Fairfax for $50.000.
We use a limit price of CAD 2300.
This means we enter an order in the market for Q 30.
[Image — the order ticket. Source: Interactive Brokers]
We genuinely believe that Fairfax can continue its tremendous track record.
Everything in life compounds Team Compounding Quality
Book: Order your copy of The Art of Quality Investing here
Used sources Interactive Brokers: Portfolio data and executing all transactions Fiscal.ai: Financial data