Marcellus’ Portfolio Updates & Insights – January 2026
marcellus.in From Our CIO’s Desk How Four Mega-Reforms by the Indian Government and the RBI Dismantled the Barriers to International Capital. RBI data reveals a staggering 58% surge in capital outflows from India over the past 5 years. This shift underscores a critical imperative: the necessity of investing in dollar-denominated assets. This is particularly […]
Volatility underscores diversification benefits
Since inception 15 months ago, Marcellus Multi-Asset PMS (MAP-Balanced) has outperformed its benchmark by 2.44% points and Nifty 500 TSR Index by 4.57% points (annualised, net of fees and expenses). At that time, Indian equities had run up significantly and seemed overvalued when macro growth had slowed, the earnings cycle had already peaked and risk […]
Navigating India’s Structural Shifts
Our core philosophy in Marcellus CCP remains anchored in finding consistent compounders with clean accounts, deep moats and disciplined capital allocation. However, the drivers of that predictability have evolved over the past five years (after GST and Covid-19). Traditional moats, such as distribution in FMCG, are being disrupted by digital democratization. India’s K-shaped economic evolution has constrained […]
Marcellus’ Portfolio Updates & Insights – November 2025
marcellus.in From Our CIO’s Desk The Long-Awaited Policy Response is Here The employment, wages and consumption slowdown that has played out in India post-Covid has now been recognised by India’s policymakers. Whilst their policy response has been substantive (especially with regards to boosting consumption, the mainstay of India’s economic growth), the structural issue of […]
Three Years In: Staying Objective Through Market Extremes
The Global Compounders Portfolio (GCP) is Marcellus’ Global Equities strategy launched in October 2022. It invests in 30-40 deeply moated companies across developed markets—businesses that combine high returns on capital with prudent reinvestment and disciplined capital allocation. The aim has always been straightforward: to deliver long-term compounding of capital through ownership of exceptional franchises, while […]
Marcellus’ Portfolio Updates & Insights – October 2025
marcellus.in From Our CIO’s Desk India’s 5-layered Consumer Stimulus; More Needed After a five-year flirtation with boosting public capex, the Government of India is now focusing on the main engine of India’s economic growth: Consumption. The last 6 months have seen the announcement of a 5-layered boost for domestic consumption including the keenly awaited GST […]
Marcellus Portfolio Snapshot – September 2025
marcellus.in From Our CIO’s Desk White Collar Jobs Growth & Wage Growth: Twin Drivers of India’s Slowdown From Diwali 2023 onwards, Indian companies’ earnings growth has decelerated at a rapid rate. Underpinning this deceleration is a sharp conk-off in consumption growth, long the mainstay of the Indian economy. Key drivers of this consumption downturn […]
Little Champs: Rising Again on its Sixth Anniversary
After enjoying a splendid run in the first three years of its inception, Little Champs portfolio’s (LCP) returns and earnings growth deteriorated from September 2022 – March 2024. On LCP’s 6th anniversary we focus on what went wrong during this period, the lessons learnt and the course correction we undertook around 18 months ago. The steady […]
MeritorQ: Low-Risk Investing with Sound Fundamentals
In this newsletter, we discuss the so called “low-risk” anomaly which posits that high beta (or high risk) stocks underperform low beta or (low risk stocks) over the long term i.e. there is NO extra return to be earned from owning riskier stocks. We show that this low-risk anomaly works in India as well. In this context, […]
Indian Banks Don’t Need More Regulation, They Need More Leverage
Indian banks are often criticized for maintaining higher net interest margins (NIMs) compared to their global peers. However, despite higher NIMs, Indian banks’ average RoE of 6.9% over the past decade lags the average RoE of G7 countries’ banks of 9.2%. More importantly, Indian banks have one of the lowest excess return (RoE less 10-year […]
Portfolio performance and update on fundamentals – June 2025
Global Compounders Portfolio (GCP): June was a constructive month for the portfolio and the broader index. However, the portfolio underperformed the index by approximately 190 bps, as markets were led higher by a sharp rebound in a handful of large-cap semiconductor names—despite elevated valuations. In contrast, our more defensive holdings, including Waste Connections, Berkshire Hathaway, […]
Global Compounders: Greatness and Value Capture
Marcellus’ Global Compounders Portfolio (GCP) strategically invests in 25-35 deeply moated global companies aligned with megatrends which aid the delivery of mid-to-high teens compounding of free cash flow/earnings. To identify such compounders, one of the markers that we look for is the amount of value companies are able to capture from broader opportunities. This is […]
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