An Indian-Made Motorcycle With a Retro Look Is Coming After Harley
In our Little Champions portfolio (which is now shut to fresh inflows as it has reached capacity) we have highlighted that several small Indian companies now have world leading market shares in niche industries (see https://marcellus.in/newsletter/little-champs/spotlighting-garware-technical-fibres/). As you would expect, this trend is going to spread as the Indian economy’s expansion allows more companies to have […]
Value Investing III: Requiem, Rebirth or Reinvention?
The legendary finance professor begins this long piece by setting up his stall – value investing is dead he says because: “It has become rigid: In the decades since Ben Graham published Security Analysis, value investing has developed rules for investing that have no give to them. Some of these rules reflect value investing history […]
Deglobalization: The ultimate ‘fake news’ story
It has become fashionable to say that we are in the age of de-globalization driven by hyper-nationalist politicians. Thankfully, the data simply does not support such an alarmist narrative. Instead the data on trade and on capital flows shows that globalization continues to progress apace. The creation of a false narrative 2016 was the year […]
Rewards of waiting for a ‘lower purchase price’ in CCP vs others
Share price performance of the Nifty50 and Marcellus’ CCP portfolio constituents over the past two decades shows that the benefits of waiting for lower purchase prices fade away meaningfully as the quality of the portfolio’s fundamentals improves. Investors who make periodic investments in companies with weak fundamentals benefit substantially from timing the purchase prices – […]
‘I feel free here’: how a miracle girls’ school was built in India’s ‘golden city’
We end this week’s edition with an inspiring story about how an artist and anthropologist from New York built a school for 400 girls in rural Rajasthan. “Rajasthan is one of the most conservative states in India, where ancient customs circumscribe a woman’s freedom and in turn any chance of economic independence. …[Michael] Daube, an […]
My Approach to Valuation
Abdullah Al-Rezwan is a young analyst who publishes some deep dive research on specific companies on his blog. In this piece, he shares his approach to valuation, a subject often misunderstood and misused. Abdullah brings out the limitations given the inexact nature of valuation as a science yet the importance of using it to improve […]
History shows that equities outperform under Democrats
The title of the article may be a bit misleading i.e, the author, who is the Chief Investment Strategist at Charles Schwab, doesn’t actually suggest one should get excited about a certain presidential candidate’s prospects of winning the elections from the market’s perspective. Infact, she reckons quite to the contrary – elections are by and […]
What Is The Internet Doing To Boomers’ Brains?
Social media has accelerated the creation and dissemination of fake news and misinformation, more so among older generations. Many of us have experienced our parents, uncles and aunts fall prey to this when they unwittingly post doctored images/videos or conspiracy theories on our family Whatsapp groups or on Facebook. This piece in the Huffington Post […]
How solitude and isolation can affect your social skills
In the wake of Covid-19 making many of us spend lots of time at home and by ourselves, psychologists have begun publishing research on what being by yourself does to your mind, your body and your behaviour: “It turns out there’s a link between the size of a primate’s brain, and size of the communities it […]
Opposition must think harder about political economy of protest to counter new political economy of reform
In this outstanding piece Pratap Bhanu Mehta highlights the BJP’s achievement over the past six months – whilst a lot of people had their heads buried in the sand on account of Covid-19 – of pushing through tricky economic reforms without losing too many votes and with the implicit support of corporate India. Mr Mehta […]
How CAPM has hurt a Generation of Indian Investors
The Capital Asset Pricing Model clearly does not work in India – neither in theory nor in practice – because in the Indian market, risk & return are negatively correlated i.e. lower risk leads to higher returns. Sophisticated investment theories can be damaging for your wealth Amongst the more delusional theories in Finance is the […]
The real lessons from Sweden’s approach to Covid-19
Sweden has gone from initially being hailed for the most liberal lockdown only to later on becoming the whipping boy for being so lax as cases and deaths per capita significantly exceeded its Scandinavian neighbours. Now with things back under control, here’s a piece in The Economist about how Sweden’s policy decisions are driven by […]
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