SPACs and Capital Structure Arbitrage
The late Paul Volcker famously said that the only innovation of true economic value coming out of the financial services industry was the ATM or the automated teller machine. But that doesn’t mean Wall Street isn’t innovative – it is just that the innovations (read CDOs, CLOs, etc) more often bring the economy down than […]
Bruised and abused, Indians make their own luck at the SCG
A match analysis wouldn’t make it into the 3L&3S generally but this one is special. It is special for more reasons than one. First, it reminds us about why no amount of sex and violence that T20 cricket is can measure up to the sublime drama of Test cricket. Second, it captures very valuable life lessons […]
How to Stop the Negative Chatter in Your Head
The pandemic has brought to fore issues around mental health. There’s plenty of research that’s now available for us to deal with the resulting stress. One field of work is around the voice in our head or as Dr Ethan Kross puts it ‘chatter’. Dr Kross is an experimental psychologist and neuroscientist who specializes in […]
Something of Value
Despite being an investment house, we wouldn’t want to make the 3L&3S all about investing as we believe as investors we can learn from multiple disciplines. However, if Jeremy Grantham and Howard Marks have something to say, we can make an exception. For the uninitiated, Warren Buffet is known to have said this about Howard […]
Waiting for the last dance
GMO is one of the most respected asset managers from the ‘value investing’ school. In this piece GMO boss, Jeremy Grantham, contends that that US equity markets today are in a bubble-like situation: “The long, long bull market since 2009 has finally matured into a fully-fledged epic bubble. Featuring extreme overvaluation, explosive price increases, frenzied issuance, […]
To ‘Keep Sharp’ This Year, Keep Learning, Advises Neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta
As many of us head towards the first anniversary of the lockdown, this podcast with Dr Sanjay Gupta, neurosurgeon at Emory University and CNN’s chief medical correspondent, is essential listening if you want to understand what the lockdown is doing to our brains and how we can look after our mental health in 2021. Dr […]
The Difference Between Investing and Gambling
Many investors erroneously believe that because the markets have run up in the past few months, the probability of the markets delivering negative returns in the future is now higher. The past twenty-one years (2000-2020) of data suggests that there is no significant correlation between returns delivered in the previous six months and the next […]
“I have nothing to hide. Why should I care about my privacy?”
Most WhatsApp groups are now buzzing with debates about whether to continue with WhatsApp or migrate to an alternate messaging tool like Signal and Telegram following Facebook’s recent decision to change privacy terms for WhatsApp users – basically taking permission to sell user data to advertisers. The choice of the alternate app aside, one set […]
Finding time for creativity will give you respite from worries
Through the pandemic driven lockdown months, many of us have ourselves or know people who have found hidden talents or at least rekindled old interests and hobbies such as painting, cooking, music, etc. The extra time on our hands for those who couldn’t WFH or atleast in the early days of the lockdown when we are […]
Long-term ≠ ∑ Short-terms – Complex systems are not reductionist. Along time dimension too.
At Marcellus, we keep reiterating and reinforcing to ourselves the need to stay focused on the long term and therefore any interesting piece on long termism naturally appeals to us. Anand Sridharan in his usual witty writing style brings out the importance of long termism in this insightful short read. Especially, the concept of how complex […]
Interview with Toby Lütke, Founder and CEO of Shopify
Shopify, a Canadian e-commerce platform company valued at c.$150bn has an interesting business model. Unlike Amazon it isn’t an e-commerce company itself but instead it facilitates businesses to go online – over a million businesses across the world use its platform. Even more interesting is the way the company is designed and functions. And behind […]
How two websites have transformed the way India is reading about courts – and understanding the law
It is commonplace these days to hear that mainstream media in India has been captured by political and corporate heavyweights. What goes less noticed is how specific providers of news have used social media and the internet very effectively to make it far easier for the public to access independent live reportage. This piece focuses […]
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