Makers Keepers: What can we learn from listed vaccine makers
As India’s pandemic continues to rage on, moving into small town and rural India with even greater inadequacies in terms of medical infrastructure, experts are unanimous in our only way out of it is to vaccinate ourselves out of it. Yet, India’s vaccination program has only gone in reverse gear with vaccination rate dropping across the […]
How Much Energy Does Bitcoin Actually Consume?
Earlier this week, Elon Musk announced that Tesla has suspended accepting Bitcoin for its vehicle purchases triggering a sharp fall in the cryptocurrency’s price. Musk cited concerns about “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal” for his decision. It is hard to believe Musk realised this only now having begun to […]
FinTech, BigTech and Cryptos – will new technology render banks obsolete?
Two weeks ago, we featured a piece on crypto by Ben Hunt somewhat misleadingly titled “In Praise of Bitcoin”, where he actually raises significant regulatory risks for Bitcoin and the likes. Whilst the piece pointed to specific recent changes in regulation, it did carry a lot of rhetoric. This time we feature a perspective from a regulator, Ida […]
Interview with Brian Bares, Bares Capital Management
Like other professionals, we try to learn from compatriots across the world and we are particularly interested in other investment strategies similar to ours i.e. long-only, low churn, concentrated portfolios. In that context, we found this interview with Brian Bares to be very useful. We start with some background on Mr Bares: “Brian Bares founded Bares […]
Why Sanjaya Baru looks at the dismantling of an old order of power elites for a new ideological hegemony in ‘India’s Power Elite: Caste, Class and Cultural Revolution’
Sanjaya Baru has done it again. Seven years ago his book on the then PM, Manmohan Singh – titled ‘The Accidental Prime Minister’ – captured the zeitgeist of the last days of the Congress-UPA era. Then then Opposition latched on to the book as proof of the supine nature of the UPA Government. Seven years […]
The fight to save India’s most elusive cat
Crazy as it sounds but even today in a country inhabited by 1.4 billion people, there are some wild animals in India about whom Indian zoologists, biologists and conservationists know very little. The fishing cat is one of them. In the words of a biologist Murthy Kantimahanti who has tracked these cats, here’s how it […]
Why we can’t outsource social change to advertisers
Often our celebrities whether movie stars or sportsmen are accused of being silent if not indifferent on social issues and not using their popularity to drive social change. Every now and then, there’s a rare movie or a commercial that comes with a social message, perhaps to gain mass appeal in the first place. Hence, […]
The Grim Secret of Nordic Happiness
This year’s Oscar for the Best International Feature Film went to a Danish movie called ‘Another Round’ (with a brilliant soundtrack), a movie about drinking and its effect on social and professional performance and happiness in general. Denmark and the Nordic countries in general have been known for their drinking culture and being the happiest […]
The elusive search for goat number 3
Some concepts of investing may sound cliched but remain timelessly effective and hence need to be reiterated and reinforced repeatedly. If it comes with a nice narrative with analogies, it becomes even more effective in driving home the point. Here’s one such piece about market timing or rather the futility of it, by Arun Kumar, the […]
‘The Pandemic Is a Prisoner’s Dilemma Game’
This is a slightly dated article from December 2020 when the vaccination drive across the world had just about started but relevant for a country like India which is feeling the desperate need for vaccinating her people as quickly as possible as tha pandemic rages across the country. The article features research about behavioural aspects […]
Charlie Munger: 2021 Daily Journal Annual Meeting Transcript
Charlie Munger is, amongst other things, the Chairman of the Daily Journal and in this capacity he presides over its Annual General Management (AGM). Whilst we aren’t shareholders in this American firm, the AGM gives Mr Munger a pulpit from which he can expound his views on the world at large. We have listed below […]
Little Champs: Spotlighting Fine Organic Industries Limited
This month we place the spotlight on Fine Organic Industries Limited, by far the largest producer of oleo-chemical based food, polymer and certain special additives in India and amongst the leading players globally. Additives are ubiquitous and used in very small quantities (typically constitute <1% of the molecular weight of the end product) but lend […]
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